IGN: Iwata "explains" Nintendo's use of region-locking

[DSGamer64]

Except there's a noticeable lack of hacks for their two running consoles and importing costs a lot more than just buying at your local store.

Maybe they should just start localizing more games then. Translate, market and sell games that otherwise aren't sold outside Japan and see how they fair.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Maybe they should just start localizing more games then. Translate, market and sell games that otherwise aren't sold outside Japan and see how they fair.

Most games that are Japanese exclusive are that way because they'll flop everywhere else.

 

[DSGamer64]

There are games that are poorly (in other words not at all) marketed when they get released in the west. Square is a prime example, they rarely ever market the Dragon Quest franchise in the west yet they wonder why it doesn't sell well here. Take The Legendary Starfy as another example. It's huge in Japan, one release here and I doubt we ever see another release in English. It didn't sell well in Japan as it had the lowest debut in the series, but that might have been due to a more Westernized approach to designing the game for a broader audience as well. But Nintendo didn't market the game here very well and I think marketing new franchises is more important than marketing old ones heavily. A franchise that has been around a while is established and will sell on the name alone, new franchises will not.

 

[FAST6191]

See, the only problem is that making a system region free doesn't do anything for the local branches of the company financially. NoA doesn't get a slice of NoJ's profit and sales figures for games that people import. And to reiterate an earlier point I made, importing and making systems region free impacts a very small amount of the install base.

Maybe they should just start localizing more games then. Translate, market and sell games that otherwise aren't sold outside Japan and see how they fair.

There are games that are poorly (in other words not at all) marketed when they get released in the west.

For the first the question is why should I then prop up a bad business model? I can certainly see the need for having divisions (tax and local policy alone is enough to see that happen) but question still stands.

Properly localising something is not the cheapest. Moreover marketing stuff is truly expensive to do it at the levels you are hinting at (dev costs are as nothing compared to this in some instances).

 

[Canonbeat234]

Honestly I think it'll show that a company can make mistakes, acknowledge them when criticized for them, and fix them.

I mean if Microsoft can make a gigantic back peddle on the Xbox One I think Nintendo can reverse region locking.

Oh McGuild, they are already changing their minds about that foolish mistake. The military around the world uses the Xbox360 to cope with the everyday life of bullshit on the field, at sea, or on shore duty. When Microsoft have announced their plans for the XboxONE. Almost all the gamers who are inside the military felt insulted about the fact that they were going to need the internet 24/7 just to play those games despite some of the active duty members being deployed inside hostile environments. Let's not forget most of them usually play FPS like's COD, Halo, and Battlefront on top of them paying for the subscriptions to use Xbox Live. If Microsoft is smart then they should know their original idea for the XboxONE will leave them to having a slow start for its launch date and not sale as close to the number of units that the previous two predecessors have manage.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Oh McGuild, they are already changing their minds about that foolish mistake. The military around the world uses the Xbox360 to cope with the everyday life of bullshit on the field, at sea, or on shore duty. When Microsoft have announced their plans for the XboxONE. Almost all the gamers who are inside the military felt insulted about the fact that they were going to need the internet 24/7 just to play those games despite some of the active duty members being deployed inside hostile environments. Let's not forget most of them usually play FPS like's COD, Halo, and Battlefront on top of them paying for the subscriptions to use Xbox Live. If Microsoft is smart then they should know their original idea for the XboxONE will leave them to having a slow start for its launch date and not sale as close to the number of units that the previous two predecessors have manage.

...Which is why they removed the internet requirements (it only requires an internet connection upon initial set up), used games DRM, and so on.

Also world's armed forces =/= entire gaming base, in fact it's quite a small section of it so no offense Microsoft isn't entirely focused on pleasing the armed forces section of gamers when they're such a small demographic.

 

[Foxi4]

Maybe they should just start localizing more games then. Translate, market and sell games that otherwise aren't sold outside Japan and see how they fair.

Now arriving at #3 on our countdown, here's a game so extremely inappropriate that you've no doubt heard of it before -- Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, also known as the witch-touching game. This is a game all about groping, feeling up and lifting the skirts of underaged girls, for the purpose of determining whether or not they're secretly witches. Because apparently, if they are, they'll have some sort of distinctive birthmark on their bodies that will reveal that fact. And that birthmark will be somewhere under their underwear.

Seriously, what the heck kind of nonsensical rules for content does Japan have in place that a game like this, containing material that would be grounds for immediate arrest and a long-term prison sentence in America, is allowed to make it out to market? It's just no -- no going near it, no even thinking about buying it. But yet the audience is definitely there in Japan, because not only has this game sold, it's sold well enough to justify a sequel -- Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 Duo.

There's no chance that a game like this will ever make it to market here. But unlike most of the rest of this list where that's been a bad thing, Japan can keep this one.
~IGN on "Doki Doki Majo Shinpan"

What's worse than touching underaged girls? Touching underaged boys. Duel Love is the girl's version of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, and involves lots of rubbing up the unclothed bodies of teenaged boys -- but not to determine if they're witches. Just to get a date.

The protagonist of Duel Love is apparently a lovestruck young girl in high school who stumbles across a group of guys who set her heart on fire -- so, to win their affections, she follows them into the sauna. Seriously, here. She goes into the steamroom with them, they get undressed, and they ask her to wipe the sweat off of their naked chests. She (meaning you, the player) happily obliges, and your stylus quickly transforms into an ever-moistening sweat rag.

I'm going to take a break and go lose my lunch for a moment (...)
~IGN on "Duel Love"

Nintendo DS - World's NO.1 Handheld Peadonsole

Totally gonna sell in the West where this is entirely acceptable and not at all frowned upon.

Excerpts from: Top 15 Most Bizzare Nintendo DS Games

 

[PROTOBOY]

Any news???

 

[McHaggis]

Any news???

You were expecting an official response already? Nintendo will be no doubt just ignoring all this annoying buzzing in their ears and hoping people eventually just forget about it. It's not like Microsoft's situation where announcing the XBox One actually caused stock prices to fall. Nintendo have far bigger problems than people not buying their console because it won't play games from a different region.

 

[Canonbeat234]

...Which is why they removed the internet requirements (it only requires an internet connection upon initial set up), used games DRM, and so on.

Also world's armed forces =/= entire gaming base, in fact it's quite a small section of it so no offense Microsoft isn't entirely focused on pleasing the armed forces section of gamers when they're such a small demographic.

True, when I think about it, that statement of mines came a military newspaper (Lolwut). With that being said, Microsoft shouldn't change their plans when they had something that majority of gamers agreed with from the two previous consoles.

IMO, the only reason why Microsoft did that because they wanted to expand on online gameplay which the Xbox360 did well by providing a good online community.