Import Concern

[JU!]

While reading EDGE E3 i suddenly had a thought, are all us importers besides people that live in Japan or America already going to be forced to play PAL. Now this would not be bad if certain games got released, and eveyone was otimised to 60hz, and closer to the U.S version, in terms of release dates. I feel if everything goes the way it appears to be the next gen of consoles will all be online or most of the games were, now how are we going to play online with Japanese or U.S games and machines?

I knw this is possible with U.S X Box machines to play online, but i buy Japanese games on the whole not American games. So with the advent of all the online games the question is soon will we be forced to play PAL because we cannot sign up for Japanese and American online services?

I want to be more optimistic and wish it was not so and i could cary on buying Japanese games. But i feel this may come to an end unless i learn Japanese, or live in Japan. But if i learn Japanese this does not mean i will be able to sign up online in Britain anyway, can Japanese online services work in Britain?

[MartyG]

I can't see how that can be a problem - how can the services determine location unless they have a list of IP addresses that might be UK based? Not something that's particularly reliable anyway. Even then it's only ever going to be a problem if you want to play online games.

I'm not really sure what your worry is to be honest.

Regards
Marty

[Shimmyhill]

But your external ip is country specific, aswell as ISP specific. If they wanted too they could.

Lets hope they dont bother eh

[MartyG]

Seems like far more trouble than it's worth tbh, besides, someone will come up with a mod to IP spoof anyway. Once again, it would be chucking money at an non existant problem when it could be spent on making region free consoles and better release schedules.

Regards
Marty

[Popo]

I think the problem more has to do with the possibility of having country-specific servers for each region release - ie Jap release will only connect to Jap servers, PAL release will only connect to PAL servers, and if you want to play with your friends in Britain, you'll have to get the PAL version.

This is what it was like with many of the DC online games I played - noteably Quake 3: the PAL version connected to a list of European servers, while the US NTSC version would only get a list of NA servers.

Isn't this how FF XI already works?

[MartyG]

Ok, I can see that - however we're talking about data that can be manipulated - so an action reply code here, an action reply code there.

Again I say - what is the point? It really is about time that the manufacturers realised there is a global market that isn't prepared to put up with what amounts to discrimination - I'm sure that it takes far more investment to produce a country lockout than it would not to have to include one. I really do think this kind of restriction is a very outmoded concept. If we look at DVD players, how many of those don't have a way of setting a region, you have to ask why this is so.

I do think region coding will eventually die out, as a time frame I'm guessing as little as 18 months.

Regards
Marty

[bwi]

I do think region coding will eventually die out, as a time frame I'm guessing as little as 18 months.

Regards
Marty

What do you base this on , ok a few Live games are region free but thats it , not exactly great strides in the last 18 years to say that within 18 months region specifics will be gone.

Bri

[Super Stu]

I suppose one way of ensuring the locality of their subscribers is to refuse a creditcard/postal address which isn't in the correct country. I gather they did something like this for jpn FFXI, which required folk to know someone in Japan?

[Papercut]

I share the concerns over not being able to import online games in the future, and I think it will happen.

If developers wanted to restrict online games to specific regions there are lots of things they could do:

limit access by ethernet address (assumes they know which is which region)
limit access by forcing you to register the console serial address (ditto)
limit access to region specific servers within the game itself (Live PSO)
limit access by home address
limit access by credit card address
limit access by ip address (not really reliable enough)
limit access by region specific email address (eg. a UK ISP's mail address)

A good reason to limit online games by region would be to charge different amounts in different regions, without people being able to import the cheaper version.

eg. PAL GCN PSO is ?5.99 per month, JPN GCN PSO is almost half that. GCN PSO needed a Japanese postal address in order to be registered.

I imagine over time developers will begin limiting access by both game region (can only connect to region specific servers) and credit card address, as they are the most reliable methods.

Having region specific servers doesn't have to mean non-global online games, it could just mean something like region specific list servers.

re: the effort that would go in to doing this. Companies have a financial incentive to restrict online access to specific regions if they can get away with charging different amounts in different areas, so the effort woulf be worth it.

To prevent hacking, having a unique id of some sort (game serial, ethernet address, console serial no, etc) would be enough to stop most attempts.

[Riskbreaker]

I suppose one way of ensuring the locality of their subscribers is to refuse a creditcard/postal address which isn't in the correct country. I gather they did something like this for jpn FFXI, which required folk to know someone in Japan?

You had to sign up with a correct Japanese address and telephone number. But once you get a couple of peeps who can input the correct details (I dunno someone who used to live in Japan or has a Japanese mate) they spread it around the community. The best websites for the game for the game have details that you can just cut and paste into the correct fields. Chances are half of the English speaking players on FFXI are using the same address

I remember the sign up for JP PSO V1.0 being similar.

[yashiro]

It is sad and ironic that the worldwide web and its underlying technology could actually be used to harm worldwide (import) gaming.

This whole region encoding crap is utter bollocks. Games should be region free and released in 'language' versions. So if I want to buy Japanese Ridge Racer I can. If I want to buy English Ridge Racer I can too.
The only downside I can see is the marginalisation, and perhaps shrinkage, of some european language markets.

What if Sony spearhead region free gaming with the PS3? This unique selling point would guarantee massive sales of the hardware on launch. A worldwide simultaneous launch would be much easier and internet gaming barriers would be removed.

A pipe dream, probably.