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.”
This week on the TD Gaming Podcast we explore four exciting news stories:
Hi guys.
Thanks as usual for the episode!
I had a very very sad loss in my life, so I did not find the time earlier to listen to the episode and commentating it.
I did not play anything beside some hours of magic the gathering Arena and try to do some WoW to distract me (was not successful ..)
Most of the last weeks I watched tv shows like Last of us, Terminator Sarah Connor chronicles (old one but did nit saw it) and Big little lies.
Sadly I can’t say anything to all other topics, because I don’t know all the games you talked about … sorry for that :/
Please stay healthy and keep the good work going!
Greetings,
Ralf