Region Locking tends to have a lot of arguments attached to it and I can understand why Region Locking is needed to a point–but there are many things that get locked behind Region Locking that I do not understand at all. I’m going to be talking a bit about both: <\/p>\n
I have definitely read a lot of things on “why does Region Locking even exist” and the simple answer is mostly due to the economy. For example, many places outside North America speak English. While the US sadly lacks the care to want to teach their students many languages early on in school (which upsets me so much T__T), it’s much more common outside our country. And when it comes down to it, our games are also a bit cheaper due to our economy. In Japan, games generally sell for a good amount more. And for places in Europe, while games are around similar prices (or more once you do the conversion), if either of these places imported from North America, they’d generally be saving money. I say generally mostly as shipping varies, but if you know someone, you could probably save quite a bit. <\/p>\n
This also has to do with release dates–if you know other languages or if a game is available in a language you know or maybe language doesn’t even matter, chances are if it’s coming out somewhere else first and you could play it and have the money for it, what’s stopping you from ordering it? Region locking is in play for that as well because otherwise, the sales for the game in other region could plummet if everyone just went and got the Japanese game. I mean, look at Pokemon X and Y–that game had each language already set for its global release (although, timezones still kind of killed that). If it wasn’t for region locks, what would’ve stopped people from downloading the Japanese game right as it hit the eShop? While this may have fixed the timezone issue, there’s still the change in sales for each region and most games do not have all the languages available to be selected.<\/p>\n
That said, there’s definitely many things I do not understand region locking for such as online connectivity and StreetPass. There’s a good amount of games that unfortunately do not let you play with people outside of your region with the game acting like the other is something completely different. You can’t streetpass anyone, you can’t play with them online, you can’t gift eachother or trade eachother and this just seems like such a huge oversight that really shouldn’t exist. There are games that play fine such as Animal Crossing and then there’s stuff like Disney Magical World and Theatrhythm Curtain Call that refuse to acknowledge any version of the game that is in another region. <\/p>\n
This gets even more frustrating with Region Exclusives. While I understand some things need to be changed for certain audiences (Such as the Bath Scene in Tomodachi Life), I also feel some things should be allowed like the Asian store for males in Style Savvy: Trendsetters (and similarly, due to removal of certain things in that game makes me worry even more we will never get the update) or going back to Tomodachi Life, while I understand many changes with food and other things, I wish we received all the new things in addition versus removing and replacing. There’s so many beautiful outfits and interesting food (like Takoyaki) in the different versions and it’s sad that we’ll never see them because they were removed. And it’s different if it’s something that could offend someone. Something that is seen as normal and ordinary in Japan could be seen as creepy or wrong here and it’s depressing that something like that is true, but would keeping in certain clothes really force that? Or food items? Especially in games that aren’t even meant to be taken that seriously. <\/p>\n
Heck, I mentioned before how the fact that all the holidays and items aren’t in each Animal Crossing game make me super sad as it’s obvious the events are translated and part of what made me interested in Japanese culture is an item that apparently shouldn’t exist outside Japan because it was removed in every other version of the game unless you got it from someone from Japan. And how is that not depressing? I just feel not only could these kinds of things easily add more content to a game, but also teach people about things they may have not known about other cultures or items and I just feel there’s not enough of that in the world. <\/p>\n
And while I can understand games needing to take time to be translated among other things thus delays from Japan to the North America and Europe, delays from Europe\/Australia to North America has always baffled me (I can kind of understand North America to Europe since that requires more than just English usually) as they are already in English and they rarely change things. I mean, we received Azran Legacy several months after Europe and they redubbed Luke’s voice so I can guess maybe that took a while… but we received Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright also several months later with absolutely no changes from the European version and that’s a delay that will forever keep me wondering just what caused it in the first place. (And make me even more sad as I wait an extra month for Fantasy Life T__T And these several months for Pokemon Art Academy)<\/p>\n
But yes, in short:
\n-I understand why region locking exists for physical and digital games
\n-I do not understand why certain modes are region locked from other regions of the same game
\n-I do not understand why there is a need to remove certain features and contents of a game.
\n-Delays for games already translated in English to a primarily English-speaking country confuses me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Region Locking tends to have a lot of arguments attached to it and I can understand why Region Locking is needed to a point–but there are many things that get locked behind Region Locking that I do not understand at all. I’m going to be talking a bit about both: I have definitely read a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[232],"tags":[247,488,248],"class_list":["post-1385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion-piece","tag-games","tag-opinion-piece","tag-video-games"],"yoast_head":"\n