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.”
As most folks expected, Electronic Arts use of the
Hi guys.
Thanks for the episode 🙂
Even if I don’t play that much since my partner died, I still like to Listen to your podcast. I hope that’s ok for you if I comment anyway, even if I can’t say that much to the topics you talk about.
I still played a lot Pokémon go and tried the new TCG Lorcana. It’s really fun and I did not know that poGo is that complex!
Do you guys know more mobile games like ingress and Pokémon go? Does anyone of you play one of these both?
Besides these I don’t play that much mobile games, so I sonst care about Apple Arcade being shut down 🙂 (I know there are games not only for mobile, but for me it feels that way).
I still plan to play BG3 when it gets a little bit cheaper and I feel like playing such a massive game 🙂
I am really looking forward Silksong which hopefully will be released this year!
Stay healthy guys and keep on the good work.
Greetings,
Ralf