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The Taint Reaper posted:Best Buy dabbled with selling European games in America when the PSP was current, but nothing really came of it. Importing seems to be something that the mass market just doesn't do unless people become more aware of what region free is. Or making something being region free a big selling point in a system's features rather than something that gets mentioned on the side. I guess the question is what games would you even sell that would have any interest? Maybe in certain specialized communities, like if there was a high European immigrant population it might make sense to get unreleased Cricket games or something. I know that here for DS titles they would often stock imported French versions of some games with PEGI ratings. Then they got special editions made for the 360 (which still had the PEGI ratings but were NTSC  )US-to-Europe can be more beneficial due to the delayed releases and how some titles get skipped over entirely. Nintendo's European pricing is insane, though. I actually have a European 3DS and was considering getting Professor Leyton vs. Phoenix Wright. It's actually significantly cheaper for me to buy it online and ship it overseas from Europe (total cost under 39 Euro) than it is for me to buy it digitally on the 3DS (45 Euro).
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Apr 25, 2014 19:47
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univbee posted:I guess the question is what games would you even sell that would have any interest? Maybe in certain specialized communities, like if there was a high European immigrant population it might make sense to get unreleased Cricket games or something. I know that here for DS titles they would often stock imported French versions of some games with PEGI ratings. Then they got special editions made for the 360 (which still had the PEGI ratings but were NTSC That's more the fault of the eshop having games not only release at the full price of their store counterparts, but subsequently also retaining that price. Layton vs Ace Attorney is less ludicrous an example given how recent it is, but I step into game and the eshop cards for stuff like Monster Hunter are still pretty darn up there. And unlike physical versions, there's no trade in value on the drat things to somewhat justify retaining the price.
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Apr 25, 2014 19:57
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The Taint Reaper posted:Xenoblade was a prime example of Nintendo not understanding their market. They gave it a real limited release to one of the worst companies possible. And they released Pandora's Tower in America as the last Wii game and nobody really knew about it either. Oh definitely, I think it comes to them being risk averse if they don't see immediate guaranteed returns. There have been a lot of Japan exclusive games they could've released in NA to fill in their large droughts that were pretty much complete (port Giftpia to Wii, Captain Rainbow, publish that one game made by the Earth Defense Force team) and had the potential to build a userbase.
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Apr 25, 2014 19:59
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Louisgod posted:Oh definitely, I think it comes to them being risk averse if they don't see immediate guaranteed returns. There have been a lot of Japan exclusive games they could've released in NA to fill in their large droughts that were pretty much complete (port Giftpia to Wii, Captain Rainbow, publish that one game made by the Earth Defense Force team) and had the potential to build a userbase. I agree all those games would have done at least somewhat well in America. Or at the very least made their system's library more robust. I mean yes you had systems like the Dreamcast not do so hot, but nobody debates the quality and quantity of the overall library. If the systems are at least known for having a plentiful library that makes the successor's job easier to build the userbase (i.e. Playstations)
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Apr 25, 2014 20:08
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The Taint Reaper posted:They can't have Americans discover their hoard of train simulators, imagine the consequences, what are you crazy?! Isn't region locking mostly to prevent Japanese gamers from importing from the West to get around the ludicrous prices over there, rather than vice versa?
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Apr 25, 2014 20:16
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Patter Song posted:Isn't region locking mostly to prevent Japanese gamers from importing from the West to get around the ludicrous prices over there, rather than vice versa? Very very few Western editions of games are playable in Japanese at all, which is an automatic deal-breaker over there. Persona 4 Arena and BlazBlue are the only titles I can think of where you can set Japanese audio and text, most other games, even if they have Japanese audio as an option, won't let you set the text to Japanese (and I think this is often done for the reasons you allude to).
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Apr 25, 2014 20:19
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univbee posted:Very very few Western editions of games are playable in Japanese at all, which is an automatic deal-breaker over there. Persona 4 Arena and BlazBlue are the only titles I can think of where you can set Japanese audio and text, most other games, even if they have Japanese audio as an option, won't let you set the text to Japanese (and I think this is often done for the reasons you allude to). Persona 4 Arena is also famously the only PS3 game to have region-locking (unless any more happened since then) Pissed the Euro crowd off a lot since they had to wait a bunch of time for their copy.
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Apr 25, 2014 20:21
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univbee posted:Very very few Western editions of games are playable in Japanese at all, which is an automatic deal-breaker over there. Persona 4 Arena and BlazBlue are the only titles I can think of where you can set Japanese audio and text, most other games, even if they have Japanese audio as an option, won't let you set the text to Japanese (and I think this is often done for the reasons you allude to). But there's also weird instances in the past where things were mixed for no reason at all. Take the Sega Saturn games for example, you had both the English Translation of the Title and the Japanese Title on the same jewel case. And on the back of the case many games had an entire English translation of the prologue to the game(i.e. Policenauts). And some games you could set to English just by changing your location to America or the UK and the game would change everything in game to English.
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Apr 25, 2014 20:31
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The Taint Reaper posted:But there's also weird instances in the past where things were mixed for no reason at all. This rarely happens the other way; I've run my consoles in Japanese and it's pretty rare for a Western SKU of a game to have Japanese (especially text) as an option, although exceptions do exist. The breakdown is usually like this: - North and South America has games in English, French and Spanish, with the occasional Brazilian Portuguese. - Europe has those languages plus German and Italian and whatever else they could be bothered to support (e.g. Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian). Australia and New Zealand get these editions too, as do other areas like South Africa and the Middle East. Generally other than German and Italian these will be text-only translations, no dubs (except maybe for Disney stuff). Rarely there will be a special edition for Australia and/or Germany due to their stricter censorship laws. - Asia will have Japanese and then maybe Chinese, Korean, and/or English. These are usually separate SKU's. Dubbing is pretty random and just because the game is made in Japan doesn't mean it has Japanese audio (e.g. Bayonetta). univbee fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Apr 25, 2014 |
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Apr 25, 2014 20:35
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univbee posted:Very very few Western editions of games are playable in Japanese at all, which is an automatic deal-breaker over there. Persona 4 Arena and BlazBlue are the only titles I can think of where you can set Japanese audio and text, most other games, even if they have Japanese audio as an option, won't let you set the text to Japanese (and I think this is often done for the reasons you allude to). It does feel like that with region-locking, there have been more multi-language carts (at least comparing the DS and 3DS), like with Bravely Default or Pokemon XY, than there were before. The only ones I can think of on the DS were the Japanese copies of the first three Ace Attorney games having English options, and those were already ports of GBA games, and NA Ghost Trick, which had the 5 European languages. Strange Quark fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Apr 25, 2014 |
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Apr 25, 2014 22:47
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Strange Quark posted:It does feel like that with region-locking, there have been more multi-language carts (at least comparing the DS and 3DS), like with Bravely Default or Pokemon XY, than there were before. The only ones I can think of on the DS were the Japanese copies of the first three Ace Attorney games having English options, and those were already ports of GBA games, and NA Ghost Trick, which had the 5 European languages. It was a combination of storage space and it just not being a regular thing early in the DS' life. Most games after the first year had full multi-language capability (if they were published by a big enough company) although the few exceptions were generally games that were very close to filling up the DS memory chips with just one language. Now that the 3DS is working with gigabytes it's a lot easier to spare 50-100 megs for a few extra languages than with DS games topping out at like 128 megs.
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Apr 25, 2014 23:04
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Getting rid of region locking doesn't mean that you can't sell multiple SKUs of a game, it just means that you can play any SKU on any system.
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Apr 25, 2014 23:06
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kimpira posted:They're worried that if he talks to anyone outside the company, he might find out how the PSN works or that capacitive touch screens exist. Well it's not like the higher-ranking Nintendo developers don't wanna talk to other people, sometimes they literally aren't allowed to: quote:Fun story: In 2004, I ran in to Miyamoto on the show floor and he gave me his business card and I was young and impressionable and generally losing my mind after our short conversation until a tap came on my shoulder from behind me. He probably isn't even allowed to have his own twitter let alone post on one.
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Apr 25, 2014 23:19
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Viewtiful Jew posted:Well it's not like the higher-ranking Nintendo developers don't wanna talk to other people, sometimes they literally aren't allowed to: ...T-They do understand that their employees have rights to private lives and who they associate with... right?
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Apr 25, 2014 23:21
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Astro Nut posted:...T-They do understand that their employees have rights to private lives and who they associate with... right? Private lives? In Japanese business culture? When your boss gets drunk and beats your rear end black and blue you better be on your knees saying sorry because you angered him and appreciate the beatings.
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Apr 25, 2014 23:24
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The Taint Reaper posted:Private lives? In Japanese business culture? I take it you're an expert on Japanese culture, then.
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Apr 25, 2014 23:40
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Suspicious Dish posted:I take it you're an expert on Japanese culture, then. well, I do watch a lot of anime
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Apr 25, 2014 23:48
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The Taint Reaper posted:Private lives? In Japanese business culture? Uh okay
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Apr 25, 2014 23:52
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Cake Attack posted:well, I do watch a lot of anime Clearly not enough if you don't get the reference. 
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Apr 26, 2014 01:58
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SwissCM posted:Much of this is known only because of leaked alpha versions of the games, so who knows how many expansion packs from the 90s are made up of stuff unfinished during development. Just about all of them, especially if the game in question was originally released as shareware. Spiffo posted:Up until the PS3, pretty much everything was region-locked without hacking. Region-free PS3's might be a thing now, but so is online shopping. Then and now, the import market is way more trouble than it's worth to a business. The original Xbox had a lot of region free games, and most Xbox 360 games are region-free, and this was also true during the first year of the console before the PS3 released.
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Apr 26, 2014 02:01
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Wasn't the DS region free as well?
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Apr 26, 2014 02:02
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Stux posted:Wasn't the DS region free as well? Yes but then they messed it up with the 3DS.
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Apr 26, 2014 02:05
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Stux posted:Wasn't the DS region free as well? Most handheld consoles were, up until the DSi came out. Handhelds traditionally were the exact same hardware in all markets to begin with, because of not needing to handle TV formats or even wall power changes. There were about 4 actual DSi-only cartridges released, so nobody really noticed the change til the 3DS.
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Apr 26, 2014 02:15
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Stux posted:Wasn't the DS region free as well? All handhelds have been forever, including the Virtual Boy. The reasoning has been that business travellers or kids on holidays overseas can pick up the game and play it no matter what country they are in. 3DS is the first one I'm aware of that had region blocks.
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Apr 26, 2014 02:29
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Fulchrum posted:The reasoning has been that business travellers or kids on holidays overseas can pick up the game and play it no matter what country they are in. That was a selling point some companies later came up with, at the time the first meaningful handhelds came out the popular consoles mostly had region locks because different regions would have completely different case and cartridge designs in some regions, and for others the CPU and other components would be changed and different clock speeds and the video output was completely different. So games from different regions simply wouldn't function. Meanwhile the handhelds had none of those issues, being self contained battery powered units without much room for massive regional changes, so adding in region locks simply wasn't bothered with (supposedly the Atari Lynx was originally planned to have region locks, though the final product lacked it).
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Apr 26, 2014 02:49
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Install Windows posted:Most handheld consoles were, up until the DSi came out. Handhelds traditionally were the exact same hardware in all markets to begin with, because of not needing to handle TV formats or even wall power changes. It also applied to the digital store the DSi introduced. Thank you Nintendo, for making it more difficult to purchase games I want on your consoles. Being region-free certainly didn't help games like Yakuza 3 and Demon's Souls.
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Apr 26, 2014 02:57
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I just ordered Jump Ultimate stars from Japan so I can confirm it is playable on my 3DS. That game owns... god drat I wish I could understand what half the objectives are.
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Apr 26, 2014 02:58
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dr.acula posted:I just ordered Jump Ultimate stars from Japan so I can confirm it is playable on my 3DS. That game owns... god drat I wish I could understand what half the objectives are. Are you serious? This is the first time I've heard of a 3DS game being region free.
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Apr 26, 2014 03:16
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The_Frag_Man posted:Are you serious? This is the first time I've heard of a 3DS game being region free.  Jump ultimate stars is a ds game.
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Apr 26, 2014 03:21
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The_Frag_Man posted:Are you serious? This is the first time I've heard of a 3DS game being region free. No no, its a DS game but im playing it on my 3ds, im assuming it will work on my ds but I have no idea where the charger is right now and im too lazy for the science.
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Apr 26, 2014 03:21
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Yeah the 3DS will play any DS game wherever it's from, just 3DS titles are locked.
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Apr 26, 2014 03:28
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I think DSi titles were or could be region-locked too, but that library is ridiculously small.
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Apr 26, 2014 04:50
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Viewtiful Jew posted:He probably isn't even allowed to have his own twitter let alone post on one. Probably for the better... https://twitter.com/realShigeruM
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Apr 26, 2014 05:22
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Astro7x posted:Probably for the better... That was more entertaining than the Cranky Kong macros.
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Apr 26, 2014 05:24
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Viewtiful Jew posted:He probably isn't even allowed to have his own twitter let alone post on one. He does. He's gone on record saying, "Don't look for me," though.
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Apr 26, 2014 06:46
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I haven't had a chance to read it yet(just skimmed it) but this article talks how difficult it is for indie devs to work with Nintendo: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/207218/The_brick_wall_No_close_encounters_with_Nintendos_indie_exec.php#.U1pgAuwtDPE.twitter
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Apr 28, 2014 17:05
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guy in the article posted:This is a bit unfortunate, but I do understand. This article is about putting a human face on the indie initiatives of the big three platform holders, and we've already got Adam Boyes and Chris Charla with some real humanizing words. I understand it's against Nintendo's policy to privilege the individual, but here you have Sony and Microsoft saying to developers, 'Hey, this isn't some big faceless corporation. Here are a couple guys you could just shoot the breeze with, and oh, they happen to run the indie initiatives for their respective giant companies.' Unfortunately, by not participating, Nintendo will continue the stereotype it has perpetuated for 15 years (give or take) of being unfriendly and unindulgent of third party developers, regardless of whether it's true. Nintendo posted:Really appreciate the background and insights, Brandon! And looking forward to any future opportunities. Have a good weekend!
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Apr 28, 2014 17:40
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Guy does sound a bit whiny. "Oh boohoo Nintendo why won't you give me an interview I trusted you!"
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Apr 28, 2014 17:46
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The problems that Nintendo has had for a long time are that they can't communicate at all to developers, nor do they seem to understand what their devs want or need. If they wanted to solve that, they'd start communicating to developers better. The fact that the indie dev lead at Nintendo can't speak to one of the biggest indie gamedev / industry news sites out there about how Nintendo is open and wants indies is very telling about how they run their company.
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Apr 28, 2014 21:43
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Spiffo posted:Persona 4 Arena is also famously the only PS3 game to have region-locking (unless any more happened since then) It took Just under 9 months after the American release for a European release to finally come out here. What's infuriating is that the publisher didn't include any other features (like additional language support). The logic was that they had to scrap that feature in order to prevent a larger delay  .What infuriates me about the region lock on the 3DS is that Nintendo's portable consoles were great for imports thanks to their lack of a region lock. I'm sure that several cult hits (e.g. Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!) wouldn't have the following they did if they were unplayable on foreign consoles. However, even if DS games got a EU release they could still experience horrific delays (infamously, the delay was so long for the EU release of Phoenix Wright 3 that its sequel, Apollo Justice had been out for 5 sodding months before it finally came out over here. I own an American 3DS as I was sure there would be games that I wanted to play that would never see daylight here. However, I almost never play it because the cost of importing is so prohibitive. Even if you find a copy of a US game for a reasonable price, it can still be hit with a nasty customs charge.
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Apr 29, 2014 03:29
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