Ushi No Tane Forum

Celestral wrote:Is it seriously because of the internet BROWSERS? Because the DS had internet too, but not region lock so it must be just the browsers. I don't even browse the internet on my DS =/ I have a computer or laptop or mobile phone for that. That's the most stupid reason they could've used to implement region lock... I'd rather even have no internet, but the ability to play any game I want to...

It might not because of the internet why it is region locked. IMO

I partially agree with Celestial's reasoning. It's more likely that to protect the economy of the country. If that's the reason, that would only cut the percentage of their profit as well since if we are buying the games in other regions and in turn, the suppliers would pay the source of their supply in Yen or Euro (or whatever currency where the supply came from). So I don't get the minds of Nintendo.

I think it's an advantage if it's region locked as well, in their side at the least. Since some gamers are willing to buy another region 3DS so that they could play the games they really want to play. But in present economic conditions, I don't know that would fair well with Nintendo since economy is not that pleasant right now.

Sorry about my rant. ^_^;

I heard the lock was because of pirating 0.0


Which sorta makes sense BUT IS SUPER ANNOYING because I imported all of my Japanese DS games legitly!


HAVE SOME FAITH IN US NINTENDO

*sobs*

I'M A GOOD PERSOOOOON


That doesn't want to buy a Japanese 3DS just to play a few games that have slim chances of coming over here :/

Now that you mentioned it. Piracy is probably the most possible reason why they have it region locked.

But region locks do nothing against .__. If your console is region locked and people hack it, that would also destroy the region lock. For example I had my PS2 hacked just so I could play my BOUGHT American and Japanese games that I could not find here.
In fact, I now want to have my 3DS hacked so I can play games from other regions. I'm definitely not going to buy 2 more 3DS's.

Isn't the PS2 consoles region-free? I might be wrong though.

i dont think its to protect the economy of your own country,
its to protect the profits FROM your country.
it started back in the GBA and GBC days.
Indie stores would go and import a huge chunk of american pokemon games (here in england) such as gold silver and then later the fire red/leaf green ones.
at the time, an american game was selling for say, $29.99 and the english version would (eventualy) sell for the same price, but in pounds.
at the time, that meant that if you changed the price from dollar to pound, the usa version cost you aprox half the cost of the english one.
(now its not totaly the same, because the price has gone up mostly, making the cost the same, give or take. an american games costing around $60ish. a uk games about £30-£40 and when you use the conversion tools, the price is about the same now)

they then sold those usa copies of pokemon (that wouldnt arrive in the uk for a year or so) for around £35-£40 pounds.
that meant that people were getting fat off the profits, and casued a lot of cease and desist letters from nintendo.
hence first of all, the semi region locking.
first, they added in a block for GBA to Gamecube games... (so, you could not connect your usa copy of harvest moon friends of mineral town, to your UK copy of A wonderfull life)
then they decided to start the region lock thing once the DS arrives with the DSi.
beccasue again, the lack of a pokemon game at the same time as the USA release casued the people to go buy imports.

now adays they have wisend up. they release the pokemon (and sometimes, mario) games at the same time for UK and then later a local language version for other areas (ie, pokemon noir for france, in french)
but they still dont do it with all the games.
they need to do this with all games, if you ask me.
the players who are in france, germany ect allready get taught english at school so most of them get by a lot better than a brit does in their language (lol...our school systems totaly pants for euro languages...my school only offered french/german back then but i wouldnt be surprised if it was english and hindi these days)

the diference between english and americn is a few words that are naughty, a few words that dont match (like fosset and tap..stocking and pantyhose) and the ocasional spelling. they would get their cash right away and the only imports would then be region specific titals. things that never come out in your region, like terranigma never made it to the usa (snes days) or harvest moon for girls gba never making it to uk....and they would still sell loads of english versions to the europeans that can deal with english, then a load more national language ones to those that cant. win-win for everyone in my eyes XD
and more room on the cart, becasue its one/two languages per cart.
im prety sure that my Wii version of magical mellody dosent *have* a girl option. i think they took that out for us *sniffle* and the only reason i can come up with, is that they needed the room to add all the 4-5 euro languages on.

no, ps2 IS region locked. i know because my friend had to buy a japaneese one with a step up/down transformer and a copy of ParraParraParradise, to be able to play it.
i have an action replay that gives you the ability to play use/japan games on my gamecube, and i think also on the Ps2.
chipped PSX's were sort of region free. i have a japaneese jigsaw game that plays in my dads old PSX, but its bad black and white XD

PsP's however, are not region locked, as i can play my american copy of Dungeon Maker in it and i also have a japanese copy of need for speed underground (that i dont play lol) that came with the PsP when i got it.
i can play my american GBA games and DS games in my brick DS (the big first versions) and my DS lite. but if it has DSi components (like i think, sims2 did, or brand bazar?) i cannot play a usa DSi game on my DSI XL thats english.

HM Silverbane wrote:the diference between english and americn

What's American? I live in America, and I know we don't speak American!
Now, in all seriousness, I understand what you mean, and if you think about it, I makes perfect sense... They don't want things to be bought but never sold, that is extremely bad for the private economy of small businesses, and just as bad on the whole economy. Overstocking is bad especially when the overstocked items never leave the shelves.

Lord_Banks wrote:

HM Silverbane wrote:the diference between english and americn

What's American? I live in America, and I know we don't speak American!

That's weird, because even in dictionaries there is a distinction between AEn and BrEn. I am a student of english filology and apart from us being taught to refrain from using 'americanisms' we are also taught RP, so we do not speak american 'dialect' O.o

Anyways, as I live in Europe I'm also impatiently waiting for our release... but I also have to keep in mind that I'll probably have to import my copy from England as the stores in Poland do not seem to even know that there are other versions of Harvest Moon apart from 'Friends of Mineral Town' and 'Sunshine Islands'

well, lord_banks, its the little things. like gray and grey. honor and honour that seperate the UK english and USA english, i mean.
that the things women wear on their legs that americans call Pantyhose are called tights here. allthough stockings are the same, a set of suspenders for an american are to hold up a mans socks, while in the UK they are to hold up the womans stockings.

those are the things that would need translating i expect. but those are small.
and the BIG shops here in the UK never bothered to buy Imports. they bought the normal pokemons. normal people used places like GAME and HMV here, about a year later from the american relese.
most towns didnt have an Indy store. my current town had 2 at the time, and GAME.
i only used to buy imports of harvest moon, becacsue i wanted the girl version. never was quite so hooked that i needed to buy a usa pokemon.
but i did buy a usa animal crossing (i asked for an australian one as it was also PAL, but they just bought american XD so they could sell me a converter disk aswel XD cheaky buggers) becasue i never expected it to get to the uk.
i also ended up buying a english copy of the same game, because it had the NES games in it without cheating.
i have a canadian copy and english copy of rune factory. why? becasue my indy had one copy of the canadian, and i knew there was going to be a long wait for the english one. i think it was close to 2 years till it arrived in the uk properly.
the most damage that was done to the game sales was that the extra cash that would have been generated by the uk pokemons were converted to the indies pockets. but truthfully, the indies struggled hard enough back then anyway. big companies got all the shares of the pie, be it game releases or consoles. they relied on the big games and the fact that (back then) it wa at least a year till the euro edition of a pokemon game came out, they needed every trick they could have, to stay up. we now have only one indy.
im not saying that its fair for companies to make a lot of cash from importing, but i can understand it. being a euro, im prety much locked out of some of the best games going, becasue i dont live in north america or japan.
im also unable to import via the net, like a lot of people because i have no credit/debit card ect, so i have had to buy the ocasional import via the indie store when i can.
or else suffer a 2-3 or even never! wait for good stuff.
region locking may be said to promote funding your own econamy, but it also locks a lot of gamers out from great titals that could be actualy released later if the companies that made them, actualy *looked* at how much their game was imported

HM Silverbane wrote:well, lord_banks, its the little things. like gray and grey. honor and honour that seperate the UK english and USA english, i mean.
that the things women wear on their legs that americans call Pantyhose are called tights here. allthough stockings are the same, a set of suspenders for an american are to hold up a mans socks, while in the UK they are to hold up the womans stockings.

those are the things that would need translating i expect. but those are small.
and the BIG shops here in the UK never bothered to buy Imports. they bought the normal pokemons. normal people used places like GAME and HMV here, about a year later from the american relese.
most towns didnt have an Indy store. my current town had 2 at the time, and GAME.
i only used to buy imports of harvest moon, becacsue i wanted the girl version. never was quite so hooked that i needed to buy a usa pokemon.
but i did buy a usa animal crossing (i asked for an australian one as it was also PAL, but they just bought american XD so they could sell me a converter disk aswel XD cheaky buggers) becasue i never expected it to get to the uk.
i also ended up buying a english copy of the same game, because it had the NES games in it without cheating.
i have a canadian copy and english copy of rune factory. why? becasue my indy had one copy of the canadian, and i knew there was going to be a long wait for the english one. i think it was close to 2 years till it arrived in the uk properly.
the most damage that was done to the game sales was that the extra cash that would have been generated by the uk pokemons were converted to the indies pockets. but truthfully, the indies struggled hard enough back then anyway. big companies got all the shares of the pie, be it game releases or consoles. they relied on the big games and the fact that (back then) it wa at least a year till the euro edition of a pokemon game came out, they needed every trick they could have, to stay up. we now have only one indy.
im not saying that its fair for companies to make a lot of cash from importing, but i can understand it. being a euro, im prety much locked out of some of the best games going, becasue i dont live in north america or japan.
im also unable to import via the net, like a lot of people because i have no credit/debit card ect, so i have had to buy the ocasional import via the indie store when i can.
or else suffer a 2-3 or even never! wait for good stuff.
region locking may be said to promote funding your own econamy, but it also locks a lot of gamers out from great titals that could be actualy released later if the companies that made them, actualy *looked* at how much their game was imported

I know the differences between American English and British English, it just bothers me when people call American English the American languague, and British English is not English it is British English! I know that there are distinctions like color and colour, the honor and honour, grey and gray, alcohol and tonic...

Can we get back on subject?

*butts in*

Let's all switch to the cool British spellings and end this nonsense with AEn and BEn. Colour and Honour actually sound the way they are spelled. Color and honor never made sense to me because I say them the same as 'colour' [like col-u-or] and 'honour' [on-uor] (I kinda put in the long u sound ^^;).
/although I'm in the habit of spelling them the 'American' way :s

And gray and grey are actually different colours. 'Gray' with the 'a' is closer to bl'a'ck. 'Grey' with the 'e' is closer to whit'e'.

Example: Gray Grey
/learned that from an art tut on tumblr

Region locks are in place also because of censorship laws from country to country. Mortal Kombat, for example, is banned in Australia. Call of Duty is banned in Germany. Most of the times, though, if you import the game it's legal to have, but you have to have a non region locked system like the PS3 in order to play it.

SilverFire wrote:*butts in*

Let's all switch to the cool British spellings and end this nonsense with AEn and BEn. Colour and Honour actually sound the way they are spelled. Color and honor never made sense to me because I say them the same as 'colour' [like col-u-or] and 'honour' [on-uor] (I kinda put in the long u sound ^^;).
/although I'm in the habit of spelling them the 'American' way :s

And gray and grey are actually different colours. 'Gray' with the 'a' is closer to bl'a'ck. 'Grey' with the 'e' is closer to whit'e'.

Example: Gray Grey
/learned that from an art tut on tumblr

Thank you for ending this!
And really? Gray and grey are different colors? that is actually kinda cool, but i am an art nut, kinda...

i never realy cared as such, about the spellings.
but you get smacked about the face with it on the wow forums, and sometimes, stuff sticks, ya know?
and yeah, i dont realy care what version of the so called english languge i speak/write/play in..i just want faster translations for the games i love.

if using the same spellings (minus local naughty words) would get me faster translation (and the removal of french/german ect to their own dedicated versions)
i would allways buy UK games when they arrive....course there are allways good games that never get to the UK...i would swap any number of GTA or COD type games to be able to get some games that never came here (shepards crossing for ps2, harvest moon 64 and snes..many older game admitedly, but same sentiment lol)