Hardware Confirmed: The 3DS is region-locked

[Goofy Time]

Well, this sucks. Following in the stupid fucking trend of the Wii, Nintendo has decided to make the 3DS locked so it can only detect games from the region you bought the device from.

http://www.ruliweb.com/ruliboard/read.htm?...ds&main=nds

????? ?DS?DS Lite??????????????
There are no Region codes in DS and DSlite
DSi?DSi LL?3DS? ???? ????? ?????????????
But DSI, DSILL,3DS has Regioncodes.
? ????? ???? ???? ??? ??????????
The Region Codes are installed in each games and the 3DS itself.
???????? ???? ????? ?????????
If the codes dont match
???????????
You cant play
??? ?????? ????? ?????????????
If the region codes are different. For example
??? ??? ???? ??? ?? ??? ?????????
If you play a korean 3DS game with a Japanese 3DS system
?????????????????? ??????????
(or vice versa) you wont be able to play at all.

Well, now that this is confirmed, we already have one solid reason why people will begin hacking this day one. Now all we need is the second part to this; some game that's very good but wouldn't be released in all three main regions. I'm banking on it being some game Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of Japan will release, but Nintendo of America will be dumbshits about and not release in the States. Or to play it easy, any Tales game from Namco-Bandai.

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

Fuck, this is exactly what I didn't want. I wish 3DS hackers all the best now.

 

[8BitWalugi]

What if it's just the 3DSWare? That's what the DSi meant by region locking.

 

[Goli]

What if it's just the 3DSWare? That's what the DSi meant by region locking.

Retail DSi enhanced (like The Idolm@ster Dearly Stars) and DSi exclusive games (like Foto Showdown) are region locked too.

 

[Goofy Time]

What if it's just the 3DSWare? That's what the DSi meant by region locking.

It's talking about codes in the games, which is directly referring to the carts themselves. If it was downloadable games, they would have said that the device is open to all but what's offered on the download service.

The DSi sort of does this already, in that certain games are being tweaked on DSi to not work on other devices if imported. Pokemon ended up doing this.

 

[Blaze163]

I've never understood the logic behind region locking. Surely it cuts down on revenues, and it puts up a totally unnecessary barrier between countries. You're fucking with world peace, Nintendo.

 

[Demonbart]

Not a smart move on Nintendo's part, they're basically begging for people to hack the thing now.
EDIT: With consoles I can understand why they lock them by region, what with the different tv standards and all that, but regionlocking a handheld is just kicking yourself in the nuts.

 

[Issac]

Well, this sucks. Following in the stupid fucking trend of the Wii, Nintendo has decided to make the 3DS locked so it can only detect games from the region you bought the device from.

I beg to differ.
All other game consoles have been region locked as well... (no, not the 360 and ps3... (and dreamcast?)) but every other. So it's not following a trend of the wii... It's following a trend of DSi if anything. Since it's their first region locked handheld console...

But I do however agree that this is soooooooooooooo damn stupid! Region locking just makes it harder for us gamers to get what we want. A game sells out in europe? still available in large quantities in the US? Too bad. A fun rythm game or manga/anime-beatemup from Japan? Tough luck....

I guess we will have to get used to our dumbed down european games now then.... (refering to the dumbing down of the titles in many european games)

 

[heartgold]

WTF this is exactly what I feared, no USA imports x_x hackers crack this shit.

 

[Demonbart]

Well, this sucks. Following in the stupid fucking trend of the Wii, Nintendo has decided to make the 3DS locked so it can only detect games from the region you bought the device from.

I beg to differ.
All other game consoles have been region locked as well... (no, not the 360 and ps3... (and dreamcast?)) but every other. So it's not following a trend of the wii... It's following a trend of DSi if anything. Since it's their first region locked handheld console...

But I do however agree that this is soooooooooooooo damn stupid! Region locking just makes it harder for us gamers to get what we want. A game sells out in europe? still available in large quantities in the US? Too bad. A fun rythm game or manga/anime-beatemup from Japan? Tough luck....

I guess we will have to get used to our dumbed down european games now then.... (refering to the dumbing down of the titles in many european games)

Not to mention that there's a lot of games we don't get and games that we do get but in such small quantities that only 5 people per country can get a copy.
As I said, for TV consoles I can understand, but for handhelds it's just useless and they're basically kicking themselves in the nuts.

 

[hakujintanuki]

I've never understood the logic behind region locking. Surely it cuts down on revenues, and it puts up a totally unnecessary barrier between countries. You're fucking with world peace, Nintendo.

It's market control.
Things like video games, most electronics, DVDs and CDs are WAY more expensive in Japan than they are in the rest of the world. If they were allowed, many Japanese people would not buy their DVDs and games in Japan, but get them for nearly half-price in the US, severely cutting revenues on the Japanese side.

There are even some cases where online retailers like amazon will not ship worldwide on some controlled items. You can only buy it from your regional version of Amazon, so that you are paying local prices.

 

[thieves like us]

the reason for the region locking (as bad as it sounds) comes down to licensing and content laws by country.

a good [older] example of this was the movie titantic which was distributed by paramount pictures in the united states, but by 20th century fox everywhere else. another example is is capcom's breath of fire II (snes/sfc), which was actually released by squaresoft in the united states.

my guess is that like the DSi and DSiLL, the japanese 3DS will only provide a language choice of japanese (unlike the 6 languages that the original DS and DSlite systems supported)

the sad part is for all of those titles that are not picked up for marketing outside of japan, people will be forced to purchase a 2nd (japanese) system in order to experience and enjoy them

 

[Black_Knight_666]

Looks like i have to buy a usa 3ds! :/

 

[Goli]

the reason for the region locking (as bad as it sounds) comes down to licensing and content laws by country.

a good [older] example of this was the movie titantic which was distributed by paramount pictures in the united states, but by 20th century fox everywhere else. another example is is capcom's breath of fire II (snes/sfc), which was actually released by squaresoft in the united states.

my guess is that like the DSi and DSiLL, the japanese 3DS will only provide a language choice of japanese (unlike the 6 languages that the original DS and DSlite systems supported)

the sad part is for all of those titles that are not picked up for marketing outside of japan, people will be forced to purchase a 2nd (japanese) system in order to experience and enjoy them

Not only that, but seeing as how Nintendo of Europe has released plenty of DS games that haven't made it to America, people may be forced to buy 3 game systems, one per region (excluding Korea), if they want to fully enjoy all the 3DS games they want.

 

[Sir-Fritz]

This sucks because theirs bound to be some good Japanese 3ds games that I'll want to play that will never be translated.

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

the reason for the region locking (as bad as it sounds) comes down to licensing and content laws by country.

a good [older] example of this was the movie titantic which was distributed by paramount pictures in the united states, but by 20th century fox everywhere else. another example is is capcom's breath of fire II (snes/sfc), which was actually released by squaresoft in the united states.

my guess is that like the DSi and DSiLL, the japanese 3DS will only provide a language choice of japanese (unlike the 6 languages that the original DS and DSlite systems supported)

the sad part is for all of those titles that are not picked up for marketing outside of japan, people will be forced to purchase a 2nd (japanese) system in order to experience and enjoy them

Not only that, but seeing as how Nintendo of Europe has released plenty of DS games that haven't made it to America, people may be forced to buy 3 game systems, one per region (excluding Korea), if they want to fully enjoy all the 3DS games they want.

Unless you don't have that kind of money. If you estimate, the 3DS will launch at around the $200 range. That's $600 for buying three of what we only needed to pay one of for last generation. If the ds wasn't region locked, what makes them think region locking the 3DS is such a good idea?

 

[Goofy Time]

the reason for the region locking (as bad as it sounds) comes down to licensing and content laws by country.

a good [older] example of this was the movie titantic which was distributed by paramount pictures in the united states, but by 20th century fox everywhere else. another example is is capcom's breath of fire II (snes/sfc), which was actually released by squaresoft in the united states.

my guess is that like the DSi and DSiLL, the japanese 3DS will only provide a language choice of japanese (unlike the 6 languages that the original DS and DSlite systems supported)

the sad part is for all of those titles that are not picked up for marketing outside of japan, people will be forced to purchase a 2nd (japanese) system in order to experience and enjoy them

Actually, the examples you used probably only involved companies and simple licensing. Like, for Breath of Fire, Capcom wasn't interested in localizing the game, so Squaresoft purchased publishing rights to localize the game. The same probably applied to Titanic in terms of distribution deals.

It has nothing to do with region locking. All region locking offers is the ability to import something from a different region, if it's not out in your own. If anything, it's to cramp on Japanese importation, as other countries have fixed currency prices for this kind of stuff and in Japan it's all over the place.

 

[heartgold]

Yeah I might be forced to buy two 3DS's, I'm not really the waiting type of person. So probably EU/USA or JP. hmm i don't know. I'll just get the EU version and pray hackers crack it.

 

[Snailface]

Got this from Yahoo Answers:

1) The original purpose for region locking was to limit the damage a single pirate can do with a single copy of the game. Without region-locking, one guy with one copy of the game can supply all the illegal copies of the game wanted in the entire world. With cartdidge-based systems, this isn't really a problem, because copying a cartridge requires another cartridge, and they are expensive. Copying a CD/DVD is dirt-cheap, though.

2) Secondarily, another purpose arose. Region locks also help enforce the publishing/distribution agreements where one company published a game in one region and another publishes in another region. Without region locks, whichever region publishes second will already have a flood of copies of the game that were imported by the people who were most interested in that game, making publishing the game in other territories less attractive. So it puts more pressure on the idea of one company publishing the game across the entire world. This hurts smaller publishers like Atlus, who tends to publish quirky, very Japanese flavored, games in North America and Europe.

[eyes glaze over] I just hope the damn thing gets hacked.

 

[Raika]

You've gotta be kidding me... I am sooooooo gonna wait for it to be hacked now. Freaking region-lock bullshit.