Japan is the holy land for gamers since not only are most of the companies that create our favorite games are located there, but also because Japan is a treasure trove of games that have never made its way outside of the island nation. So in this modern day and age of gaming, I would love to play some of these old games that have never been available to me. The only problem is, many of these games are region locked to their individual countries/areas.
Why is it that games are region locked? Is it really necessary for companies to do this? Well, yes, it is. Follow me through this week's Weekend Reading to go into this issue of region-locked games.
It's understandable that game companies need region locking. In fact, it's a part of U.S. law, according to Wiki:
For example, the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has a clause that covers "circumventing a scheme used to restrict access to copyrighted material" that may be used to prosecute people who ignore, circumvent, or crack a regional lockout scheme.
Some of the more prominent reasons for this are that it allows for individual areas to apply censorship to offensive material or "price adjustment" (also known as gouging), or to prevent possible mixups by multiple companies selling from different regions (like Japan trying to sell its products to Europe). Basically, it allows businesses and countries to run things more smoothly.
Now, looking at the flipside, region locking products is a kick in the nuts to most gamers and the like. Let's face it, Europe gets screwed when it comes to gaming. Not only do they get games months, or possibly even years late, they have a harder time importing games due to the fact that they run on PAL, while the U.S. and Japan run on NTSC.
So, as for us in the U.S., we just have the problem of not sharing the same DVD region as Japan. We're fairly lucky in terms of what games we get here, as we usually only miss out on strange Japan-only games like Densha de Go!!. Now, there are times when something like Taiko Drum Master gets imported, but we'll never get to hear the Japanese versions due to problems with music licensing. So, the problem is now that I've got something I want to play, but I can only do so by either opening my console and modding it or by using a swap disc.
Honestly, I don't trust myself with a soldering iron, so that pretty much puts me out of the question on modding my Playstation 2. Yes, I could just buy a swap disc, but after a while, that would become tedious. I'd rather just deal with a more legal means by which I could play these import games.
What I'd suggest is that console makers give us the option of unlocking an extra region on the console for a fee. This would mean that gamers would have Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony on their side when it comes to negotiating the international trade rights for this.
The only question now is how to have us pay for it? Most likely, I'd see the companies charging a monthly or yearly fee for people to play games from another region. This would be there both to pay whatever fees are incurred from licenses and lawyers, and to make it worthwhile for the company to run the service.
Another option that I could see would be a per-game license that people would purchase. Since there are a lot of games that are pointless in acquiring licenses for (already available in home territory), this would cut out on a lot of the money spent.
Now, I'm not 100% sure that either of these would work, but it's an idea that I'd like to put forward, in case someone out there is in power to make this happen. Whatever the result is, be sure to keep in mind the consumers -- we'll be paying $50-$70 for these import games, and so adding on these costs will be even more damage to our wallets.
Contest:
7:49 PM on 06.03.2007
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The Xbox 360 has a region-relative system, where region encoding can be used at the publisher's discretion. Games published in Japan generally have region locks in place, but Asian (Chinese) or American games may not have this region encoding in place.
The beauty of this is that sometimes you can get games in English imported from the Chinese region for about $20 less than what you'd be paying at, say, a GameStop. Such is the beauty of importers like Play Asia.
Instead of buying a mod chip, or an import console, we'd pay a premium to play import games. This premium can be anything the game companies want it to be.
They could also start offering "advance" versions of games to regions that won't get them for a while. They would have an entire new market to sell to. They can sell the "advance" version, with it's mega-price, and people will eat it up, thinking they're "hardcore". What's more, this doesn't mean the release is actually any earlier than it would have been otherwise. They'll just bump back the "native" release to make their marked-up game seem early.
We would be giving them a reason to make games more expensive.
I'm going to have to side with Doomtrain with this one, since he hit the nail on the head. This would just be exploited by bigger companies to squeeze more money out of gamers while holding back on real releases, or even using the amount of imports as a demographic for how well the game would be when it's legitimately released.
Agreed about it being a somewhat ridiculous notion. Besides, aside from the Wii and Japanese 360 games, there's really no need for modchips this generation, as there's not a whole lot of region encoding to work around this time. Especially as far as Europe is concerned, since this means most American 360 and all PS3 games are fair game for importers. This is ofcourse assuming they actually have some sort of importer with balls enough to send stuff over there after the whole Lik-Sang fallout.
Rise up my European brothers!
Viva La Revolution!
Or just buy a Japanese PS2; they're probably pretty damn cheap by now, so I'm considering it. I'm also considering when's a good time to import a Japanese Wii to download Japanese VC games that won't ever come out here. I'm a consumer whore, though, so your mileage may vary.
Nintendo are greedy bastards though..hopefully wii will get a full on freeloader so bleach fans can make asses of themselves.
Anyway, again, it does suck that they get the raw end of the deal, but it's not like they're trapped with some format lock. Japan has the unfortunate language barrier set between it and the rest of the world. As an importer of Japanese games, it's a difficult barrier to overcome and can make or break some really compelling games unfortunately.
Anyone who really wants to import, owes it to themselves to start learning some Japanese.
For example, Capcom publishes GTA in Japan. If Japanese gamers could simply import the USA version, Capcom would be screwed.
You're proposing a fee that we as gamers pay because a company is too lazy to port a game to PAL or translate it to English?
If there is a demand for something it is the company's responsibility to provide the supply. They're just missing out on revenue, IMO, and forcing big fans to go use illegal methods to play the games they love.
Also, if it isn't really available here at all, is it really illegal? If it's available (but not "commercially"), then it just means someone else figured out a better way to get it to the "customer" than the company did and decided to make it free. Circumventing laws to bring it here, sure, but it's easier to justify a "pirated" version of something when it's impossible for you to get otherwise. I'd pay for a rom if that's the only way to get it. Why not offer it on VC/XBLA/PSN?