What is the point of region locking?

[o.pwuaioc]

Is there any evidence that the PS3 suffered as a result of no region locks?

[Curlypaul]

The most legitimate reason was on a technical level - the differences between NTSC and PAL TVs mainly.

Thats another old argument that I remember being thrown around in the gaming press in the 90s, but I don't think that it holds. The MD and SNES will output whatever TV signal the console was built for, and hardly anybody bothered to optimise their games for the PAL regions anyway.

I can understand the piracy issue though - even in China manufacturing a pirate cart will cost money, if the carts are a different shape in Europe and the US, which were smaller markets that Japan at the time, it makes the prospect of creating pirate carts for those regions less attractive.

The thing that gets me is that while Nintendo have always has some sort of region lock on their consoles, their handhelds have been region free (up to the 3DS anyway) so the argument of censoring content for certain countries starts to crumble as well.

I think region locking certainly hurts niche genres, particularly the Japanese ones that so many of us are eager to play. If a schmup is region free it obviously has more opportunity for sales without a full on US release.

I think the region free aspect might be the final deciding factor on whether I get a 360 or PS3 or not tbh.

[Jerkface Killah]

On the games that really dont have much voice acting such as Shmups. Why not make all languages available and you just choose the region your in? That way they could just release it everywhere on the same day. Is there something I am missing? For example, i would love to get undefeated hd for my PS3 over here. But its a Japanese game only. Doesnt make sense to me.

The PS3 does not have region locking.

If PS3 is region free, why do they put the game's region on the spine?

[brunoafh]

If PS3 is region free, why do they put the game's region on the spine?

Because blu-rays can be region locked, but pretty much never are, PS3 games especially. I don't know even one off the top of my head, but I have heard there are a few. Possibly the EU version of Bayonetta, can't remember though.

[Flake]

Is there any evidence that the PS3 suffered as a result of no region locks?

Nope, but the PS3 has enjoyed a piracy level WAY below that of almost any other game console. Sony probably did not see a reason to bother with region locking because of the combination of Blu Ray and proprietary encoding.

[Flake]

Is there any evidence that the PS3 suffered as a result of no region locks?

Nope, but the PS3 has enjoyed a piracy level WAY below that of almost any other game console. Sony probably did not see a reason to bother with region locking because of the combination of Blu Ray and proprietary encoding.

Other systems (like the Wii or 360) use a strictly off-the shelf medium for data and are architecturally very much like a PC or Gamecube, respectively. That is heaven for pirates!

[ninjainspandex]

i fail to see how limiting your customer base is a good business strategy, then again im not a buisness major and im still raging about mushihimisama HD being region locked

[Opa Opa]

Having complete control over the distribution of your product.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Having complete control over the distribution of your product.

This. Not much more to it.

[MrPopo]

To go into more detail, you can make a lot of money through a licensing deal which will generally get your product into the hands of more people than the import crowd. Additionally, you have things like reverse importing; games in Japan retail for more than they do in the US, so if the US release would be fairly playable by the Japanese players then they might reverse import the game to save money.