One of the greatest things Nintendo has done was allowing the DS to be unlocked for regions. This allowed gamers around the world to share their favorite games from all cultures and countries with just a click of the “buy” button at an online store.
The DSi loses this great freedom by locking it down to a region. “Nintendo DS software is region free so you can play any DS software on DSi from any region. You can also browse the internet on your DSi wherever you are in the world and exchange your photos with friends from around the world,” says Nintendo (CVG).
Much like the US Entertainment Industries need to lock down everything and contribute to global piracy, Nintendo follows suit with their hand-helds, tis a sad day indeed. Of course Nintendo reasons it all away by yelling parental controls and making it easier for regions to access their own content.
“DSi is region locked because DSi embeds net communication functionality within itself and we are intending to provide net services specifically tailored for each region. Also because we are including parental control functionality for Nintendo DSi and each region has its unique age limit.”
Specifically tailored for each region is a nice way of saying that each region has to pay the penalty of not being “first” (second, or third) to get some cool new features. Although Nintendo could put emphasis on the region the gamer lives in with complete access out of those bounds if they wanted, they’ve chosen to use this as a crutch to lock users out of content.
Users will get their content, of course. It just means more home brews, software hacks, hardware hacks and workarounds for the system. If that’s what Nintendo is trying to inspire, then they’ve done their job right.
However, wouldn’t it be great if they could just come out and say “we don’t want certain people accessing specific content until we say you can.”
@Street Fighter X Tekken DLC will never come to Xbox 360
I get Dan’s point, placing the DLC on the disk is like dangling a carrot in front. And yes, since the DLC is already distributed, then why not get some money out of it?
@Vivendi finding few buyers for Activision-Blizzard
Thing is, the game industry is quite tough. Spending N billions to buy a piece of it is quite a risky bet. Miss-manage it and you’re never going to recover the investment. So I can understand why nobody is rushing to buy.
As from the potential buyers point of view, Vivendi desperately needs money. Play your cards right and you can get Activision-Blizzard at a nice discount đ
@âWouldnât be surprisedâ if more aggressive PC games start to appear
Hitting a Diablo 3 home run: good luck. It’s hard to do for any platform, not just the PC.
Erm, no cycle detected on my end, always KB and mouse here.
@Grand Theft Auto V will support planes and jets, wonât have beta test
Not a fan. Loved Mafia though.
@ Question of the Week.
I was going to say ‘No’ initially, but I saw the hardware specs, so it’s a ‘maybe yes’ now. Android is hackable, it has a USB port so ….
Gearbox: âWouldnât be surprisedâ if more aggressive PC games start to appear: For the record, I got excited as soon as I heard you say that Borderlands 2 would have drag-and-drop inventory, because Borderlands’ huge number of items and weapons makes it a pain to navigate through the inventory with the consolish setup it had. Other than that, all I got that Gearbox was placing a huge bet on the PC, and telling everyone how great it will be to be a PC gamer.
@OUYA: Good for them for tons of funds, but this can also be the point where a Kickstarter goes horribly wrong. Seriously, from what I understand they pretty much said “we’re going to try these bunch of different ideas together and see if they stick”. Let’s hope they’re successful and manage to create a great platform.
@QOTW: Probably not. I barely play Android games, and I doubt any huge games will be on the system before anyone knows how successful it will be.
And yes, Gearbox are looking for headlines: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/24/randy-pitchford-plagiarism-is-rife-in-the-industry