Topic: Region Free PS3

[Talon]

Now here is some good news for the PAL territories region free ps3.  Finally we wont have to wait for games to be released up to 6 months later than the US.  Its an importers dream.  The only thing you have to be weary of is that your TV will need to support NTSC, which most TV's here in Australia these days support both NTSC and PAL.

It will be interesting to see if other companies (Nintendo & Microsoft) adopt this policy for their consoles.

Oh and just on a side note SONY has decided that Australia is now apart of the world (unlike Microsoft) and we will be apart of the PS3's worldwide launch. WHOOOOOT!!!!

[Ian Sane]

Region free means that SCEA's dictatorship policies of blocking games from being localized is no longer an issue.  If they decide that a cool 2D game isn't allowed to be released in North America those who want it can now get it with less hassle.

Hell I'd buy a PS3 just for Fire Pro Wrestling if region lockout was no longer an issue.

The idea seems to be to prevent piracy which I think is a good idea.  With no region lockout the only people who are going to mod their PS3 will be hackers so if Sony can cut them off from online gaming or something like that they can do it without innocent importers getting screwed.

It's not like imports f*ck up local sales for the Gameboy games.  Considering the higher price with importing and the language issue it's not like this is going to throw sales predictions all out of whack.

[Shecky]

IIRC, Nintendo products have never really had stong region protection - the gamecube basically had a jumper to switch between US/JAP regions.

[capamerica]

I think they are only doing this is because Nintendo and Microsoft have pretty much dropped region block outs on games all ready. If Sony were to keep Region Block outs it would have hurt sales. Pretty all the Xbox360 games are Region Free, Some games were region blocked but its up to the company. I think Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero and DoA4 were the only games that were region blocked.

Also I wouldn't be surprised if the Revolution is also 100% region free. The Cube all you needed was 3 wires and a switch to make it multi-region.


I still think Sony won't make a worldwide launch and it will only be North America and Japan first and Europe a few months down the road and everywhere else a few more months later. There is no way Sony could make a Worldwide launch in such a short amout of time. We don't even have finished PS3 hardware yet.

[KDR_11k]

Oh and just on a side note SONY has decided that Australia is now apart of the world (unlike Microsoft) and we will be apart of the PS3's worldwide launch. WHOOOOOT!!!!

How a missing whitespace can screw up your post: You just said Australia is being treated as not part of the world.

[Bill Aurion]

I like how this was the only interesting news tidbit from Sony's entire GDC keynote...

[Ian Sane]

"If Sony were to keep Region Block outs it would have hurt sales."

This sounds like the sort thing I would say.  The amount of people that import is pretty small.  I don't think it would ever be that big of a deal.

[KDR_11k]

No but those who install a mod chip "to play import games" matter, as do australian laws.

Never mind that region lock is just all around stupid.

[Renny]

'Region protection will never work. They'll find a way to circumvent it.'

'All right, screw it. We'll just make it region free and let SCEE sort it out.'

I expect Sony Europe to crack down harder than ever on importing games.

[Talon]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
No but those who install a mod chip "to play import games" matter, as do australian laws.

It is not illegal to install a mod chip in Australia

[KDR_11k]

No but region lock is illegal in Australia.