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.”
Hi guys.
Thanks for the episode 🙂
I have not been playing a lot, because i am more into wathcing movies and TV shows instead of gaming. But i played some Magic the Gathering Arena at least:)
Plaguetale: this looks really nice, lets see when it will come out and if i will find time for it 🙂
Minecraft Legends: i could not think of much things, which interest me less than this 😀
Sonic: i was never into all the sonic games … its too chaotic and fast for me .. dont like games like that 🙂
german language: it´s even harder if you are native speaker, to hear and feel how our language is goind down more and more. More slang and english words. Its sad that the youth does not even want to talk “real” german, they have their own language 🙁
Smart TVs: i really love all this functionality, not even the TVs. I made a lot automated in my home. I love my harmony, and i did a lot with Alexa and some routines. Sure its all just for fun, but i love it 🙂 I have a LG 4k 3d HDR Smart TV … it was freakin expensive .. but the quality is awwesome 🙂 Connected is a new Denon AVR receiver and a 5.1 Teufel Sound system 🙂
Please stay healthy and keep on with the interesting work 🙂
Greetings,
Ralf