Hop2089 said:
I don't have a definite source but I have imported the DSi at launch and has seen the region locked features and the game quality differences between the US and Japanese DSiware, I can conclude that region lock is very likely on the 3DS for the exclusive games, DS support will still be region free. I'm used to the costs of importing these days, back when I was younger, I actually was shocked at the cost of imports and worse the standard cost of some classics in Japan, in the mid 90's several games costed over $100 just for the game itself and these were standard Japanese prices not the inflated total from importing at the time.
It won't just be the downloadable "3DS Ware" that gets region-locked this time, though. The DSi wasn't successful enough relative to the Phat/Lite to justify releasing any good cartridge games as DSi-exclusives, so there's only been like 4 of those. And DSi-enhanced titles can still be played on a normal DS without losing much... in nearly all of them, the DSi features aren't worth jive, anyway.
But since the 3DS will have its own new line of cartridges games, they'll all be region-locked from day 1. You'll have to keep importing them for the life of the system... downloadable content is a bit different, as the price difference isn't usually extreme, and there's no shipping/etc. But I wouldn't want to import cartridges indefinitely; especially when there's rarely much difference between the Japanese and American versions other than language.
