Why are the Wii and 360 region locked?

[steven787]

RolStoppable said:

Soriku said:
Question...if the US dollar is weaker than EU's then why do EU get games so late when they can make a ton of money off EU?

It has nothing to do with the strength of currencies, region locking exists since a very long time.

It must have to do with companies wanting that their American and European departments don't take away sales from the other regions. Maybe to get a better idea how well games are really doing in each region. Why else have companies been so much against the import of games from other regions? Hm, that could be because of legal issues, because the laws are so different in the various countries videogames are sold in.

Wiki says:

• Allows items to be released at different dates in different regions. This is most advantageous in the case of movies, where the costs of localizing and promoting a film make it prohibitively expensive to release in more than one part of the world at a time. Regional lockout theoretically prevents consumers from obtaining the item "ahead of time" by buying the item from a foreign exporter. (For example, buying the DVD of the latest foreign hit movie before the movie has even reached local cinema screens.)
• Allows price differentiation between markets (localisation), thus increasing the potential revenue from worldwide sales and/or making products affordable in markets not tolerating the prices of other regions.
• Allows the correct upstream copyright owner to receive royalties for each copy, where copyright terms or exclusive licensees differ between countries, notably as in the case of Peter Pan.
• When distribution contracts for each area are awarded to different companies, it allows a company to avoid "stepping on someone else's toes". See Market division.