Region Coding, Why?

[omgwtfbbq]

bdbdbd said:
@omgwtf... 1. Of course importing is small due region coding... :) 2. It's madness not to make NTSC compatible console to Australia. But even if Australia would have non-Europe localised version, there would still be a markup for prices. Think about different costs in shipping, taxes and retailers profits. 3. Their local companies suffer from importing. This means less advertising and worse customer service. 4. Dropping prices is usually used for boosting the sales, but with certain price compared to certain sales, lower (or even current) pricepoint is no longer profitable enough. Therefore you have to either raise prices or stop selling the product to sell something else, that you can make profit with. If importing and downloading games is pretty common in Australia, it's no wonder that prices are so high. Anyway, if console manufacturers decides to hit China, or other low income countries, with low pricepoint games (which is needed for wide success), importing from these countries become a problem. Then you will really lose money.

 1. Exactly my point! ;) While Nintendo claims that "importing is rare so there's no need to make games region free" in reality we know that the market if importers are small because they force it to be small and conveniently they can use that as an excuse for keeping it small.

2. Australia uses PAL. Shipping? Australia has its own plants to make the discs/carts. The shipping is done by the Interwebs (ie, free), and retailers profits are the same as in US. Taxes are the only difference, but that's not $30 of the price (10%, most US states have similar).

3. The local companies don't suffer from importing if: (a) they release in a timely fashion, and (b) they release at a similar price.

4. Importing is not common in Australia, and neither is downloading. Once again, see (3) to stop local shops from sufferring. This is Nintendo's problem, but they are making it our problem by region coding their consoles and games (which, I should mention, is illegal here)