they may as well stick a giant bullseye on it saying "plz hack me"

I'm with ya Jim, I dont like region locking. I've never really "understood" region locking to be honest... yeah I know that there's financial and sales mumbo jumbo involved, but in the end why block potential sales of your product / games?

All the more reason to pirate. Good job Nintendo, forcing people into hacking/pirating.

Meh, so ill have to wait a few months to play the Pokemanz.

Aw shucks.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Ah well the 3DS will be an amazing piece of hardware regardless.

Region coding is probably the most ASSANINE idea ever. So what if I buy a perfectly legal copy of a game from another nation?

Well that settles it then. Between the battery life news and this, I'm not buying a 3DS until they do the "3DS Lite". Or at the very least until someone hacks the system so I can import safely.

Is that krang?"Retreat to dimension x"

Well that is kinda sucky, but who am I kidding, I never buy imports for anything. I'm still super excite for this here magic box of 3 dimensions.

Why why do systems bother with region lock?

All your doing is hurting sales of games especially when a game is for example only released I. Japan plenty of others would love to import but no you have to be lame as fuck nintendo. Also loolong at you ms I know you give the devs the choice but you should change that and make it all region free. Region protecting does nothing good

No 3D dating sims for me.

And to think I was about to buy one. Now I know better.

Sarcasm aside, it sucks, but if there's a decent collection of US software then I'll still bite. And there's always companies like Aksys and Atlus who bring games over to us round eyes from time to time, so that's something.

And who knows, with Konami possibly publishing Otomedius Excellent for 360 in the states, maybe they'll bring over some other obscure Japanese titles as well. Here's hoping. I'll probably keep my DSi until I know the 3Ds plays my import DS titles.

That's pretty damn lame. I never acquired a DSi as I didn't want to be locked out of anything (though I guess I locked myself out of everything). While I don't import a lot, I do have a few Japanese DS games that I've enjoyed greatly over the years. This is sad.

That'll get frustrating for the English translated titles that NOE decides not to pick up. Like Trauma Center: Europe still doesn't have the DS sequel released at least 2 years ago. No sign of 999 coming over here either. I really like my handheld's because I know they're free to play any title from anywhere. I'll be quite annoyed if region locking is Nintendo's new thing.

@Nyktharaz

Perhaps not. We're getting Pokemon Black two days before America.

Oh and there's no excuse to pirate. Your just an idiot with no money and really odd ways of justifying crimes.

I was already iffy on the 3DS with the short battery life and the laughable launch titles. Now they're forcing me to AGAIN wait an extra year for a Kirby game. Sick of their crap, not getting the device. I don't feel like being forced to mod another console *looks at Wii*.

To quote someone from NG: "I have always been against hacking, but I hope someone hacks the 3DS and do a lot of shit with it."

@MasterBalls: If you buy a system you should be able to buy and use the games it was made for. I bought a Japanese DSi to play a region-locked game. I will not be doing that again.
This probably doesn't matter to a lot of people here, but an importer the 3Ds is not looking desirable now.

I'm with Renegade. It sucks, but the 3DS lineup EVERYWHERE is so good tha it doesn't matter right now.

And to all you people claiming Nintendo is "forcing" you to pirate, or "forcing" you to mod... I don't see anyone twisting your arms or requiring you to do anything. This stuff sucks, but that doesn't mean you HAVE TO respond/retaliate in any way.

ITT people don't understand how shit works.

Noooo! We Europeans always get the finger when it comes to releases, I mean where is my Epic Yarn already?

I haven't imported many DS games but anything that closes a system more than it should is a bad idea in my book.

Also, was ANYTHING going to stop someone from hacking the 3DS... probably not.

I could have sworn that only downloadable content was region locked on the DSi.

Kind of a dick move in any case.

Bummer. The reason why I got into the Phoenix Wright series is because I imported the first one. I can understand that since the ratings are different in each region and with viewing movies that it needs to be region locked for that, but still. It's kind of bullshit. Couldn't they do what the PSP does and region lock movies and downloadable games, but have retail games be region free? Also does this mean DS games are region locked too???

The DSi is region locked? My European DSi played American games fine, though...

No one complained loud enough. Good going.

I imported Dawn of Sorrow and Game Center CX 2. The first because I was fucking excited about Castlevania and wanted to play it FIRST and the second because XSEED didn't see enough sales from the first game to bring over the second, and that's kind of a damn shame.

I have a ton of imported famicom games and whatnot, because cartridge adapters are cheap and easy to manufacture/jury rig, but when it comes to newer systems that's not so much an option, and people just opt for the R4s and the jailbreaks. It kind of sucks for people who legit import games. Either you buy a whole new system to play a few games on, or you just shrug your shoulders and mod your console which may have other ramifications.

Well shit.
How am I supposed to play Love Plus in 3D?

And once again, us Europeans are fucked.

This is horrible news.

Even without the region-lock, I fail to see the benefit of importing unless you actually understand Japanese.

I mean, there are some genres you can go without, but anything story-driven or text/stat heavy is going to be a chore to play without some online reference.

Then again, the only games I have ever bothered to import are fighters, that time I imported Pokemon Crystal didn't work out so great for me.

One of the best things about the PS3? REGION-FREE GAMING. Same with the DS Lite and GBA. This news is definitely a letdown, but I am confident in the homebrew community that I won't have to wait long to send my message to these idiots for implementing such a fucktard solution.

@Silent Protagonist

First sentence of the article. Sometimes games aren't released in Europe at the same time as North America. A lot of Europeans speak English.

As already stated, this is probably the worst news for Europeans since NOE is either really slow in localizing games, or simply doesn't put out whatever title at all. Yeah, imports and blah blah blah, but it sucks to be completely locked out of a legitimate purchase and be unable to do anything about it legally without buying another console.

Yeah, some will do that, but others...yeah, they're not gonna want to play nice with this.

NeoGaf is a joke. This rumor has about as much credibility as Pachter does.

I live in the UK, and I couldn't give less of a shit. I'll just wait for my games to be released in this country no matter how long it takes, and if the hype becomes unbearable, that's just part of the fun for me.

DO WHAT YOU WANT COZ A PIRATE IS FREE!

YOU ARE A PIRATE!

I was expecting this, but it still comes as a disappointment.

One of my favorite games of all time is Hatsune Miku Project Diva and that wasn't released outside of Japan, seeing as Japan tends to get alot quirky awesome games that we don't makes this news rather disappointing.

As someone whose (fairly large, I should point out) DS library consists of almost 50% imported games, this is easily the worst (gaming) news I've heard all year so far. Sure, it's just been 11 days, but still. But you know what, I can deal with this if they just fucking release games here in Europe when it's released in America so I don't have to import it. Japan I can understand, but not America.

@The Silent Protagonist:

You're assuming that the only games people would import are ones from Japan. I have the European version of Last Window (Hotel Dusk sequel) which Nintendo didn't feel the need to bother releasing in America.

There is but a single reason for region locking. That reason being to sell game X at one price in Region A and a different and probably higher price in Region B. While preventing someone in Region B from buying the game cheaper (including shipping) from Region A. In general its simply because someone up the corporate ladder decided to be a tosser with the prospect of making slightly more money.

I think I have only imported one game in the history of my console adventures (would have been more but you hit the language barrier) I wish I could have enjoyed the Story for Carnage Heart portable but It was enough to enjoy playing the game. Long story short its not a huge loss to me personally but I feel for those who did enjoy importing games from other regions that otherwise would not have been released to them (I'm looking at you, majority of obscure JRPGs)

Considering I played Jump Super Stars and Jump Ultimate Stars FAR MORE than all other games in my DS library COMBINED... yeah, this could be a huge problem.

Will wait to see if a sequel of sorts appears. If it does, then I'll have to figure out some way to import a Japanese 3DS and just forget about the American counterpart.

This is why I like to be able to choose what runs on my devices freely.

It's a shame people assume the only reason people ever want devices unlocked/jailbroken is piracy - but it's nice to see things like this to remind people that there are perfectly legitimate reasons to want your devices to be free.

@kariido
"All the more reason to pirate. Good job Nintendo, forcing people into hacking/pirating."

Not really. See, there's this thing called restraint.

A lot of people lack it but basically (in this example) the restraint would come from not stealing something just because you can't get it in your country or you lack the patience to wait for an official port that would not only support the game dev but also encourage the devs/nintendo to release all games to all markets.

Anybody who gets a copy of a game for free because they can't purchase it in their country needs to wake up and realise that by stealing potential profit from the devs they are cutting of their noses to spite their faces.

Daaammmnnnittt. I mean, I had this nasty gut feeling that it was coming, but...

Daammmnnnittttt.

:/ Honestly, this sort of impedes my purchase. I don't wanna lose support for the amazing import titles I've got, plus I was looking into getting more. [Ouendan comes to mind; I still play the shit out of that game. Need sequel.] Great job, Ninty :D Thanks for the love! Guess I need to rely on NOA to bring over some good stuff, like Fatal Frame IV, the Last Window...Things are gonna be great. :]

Why would you do that?!.jpg

DSi wasn't really region free. You can still play JPN, but ONLY if they didn't utilize the camera, to which you just can't use that feature. & there was like, a very few select games.

Really, the only "region protection" the DSi had was the DSiWare Store.

I seriously hope the 3DS's region protection only applies to the 3DSware & the GB Virtual Console.

I'm not sympathetic about region locks. This is a global market. Many people have enough foreign language proficiency that they would prefer to import certain games, even if those games are text-heavy.

Others just play despite missing out on a little text. Without importers we may have never seen a western release of Demon's Souls, because Atlus might not have noticed it and picked it up. The poor quality of many translations and the average 3-5 month wait time for localization also affect things. Keep in mind that it DOES go both ways. Sometimes Japan and Europe take half a year, only to get an inferior port of an American game.

As for piracy, Microsoft's policy of publicizing bannings, focusing on heavy online integration in areas other than just multiplayer games, and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and risk for pirates is a much smarter solution to the problem than restricting the hardware's capabilities. Sony tried to remove Linux support last year and ended up catalyzing a much bigger problem than the Linux had been.

@bakewell

"the restraint would come from not stealing something just because you can't get it in your country or you lack the patience to wait for an official port."

If a game sees no release in your country and no announced port, as happens often, a gamer has 3 choices.
1. Don't hack/pirate and never play the game = NO Developer profit.
2. pirate = NO Developer profit.
3. Hack and import = Developer profit.
The best decision is obvious, hacking will support developers. Nintendo do force people to hack with this move and that will inevitably cause a little extra piracy. Individuals are responsible for their actions but Nintendo will be responsible for their effect on the hacking/pirating statistics.

@jazzpanda

And not once did I say importing is a bad thing, my comment was fully in regards to pirating hence i suggested waiting for a port.

Of course if a port isn't forthcoming then hack and import.

I think only the DSiWare games are region-locked. I just got a game from Europe and was able to play it on my American DSi

What a stupid decision Nintendo, now it's going to be hacked to death.