| Teeqoz said:
Of course they took a risk with the 3DS making it region-locked, and yes it was a stupid decision. Both the DS and the GBA were region free. So was the PSP (except for the PSP's UMDs, but the games were region free.) and then they got a bad idea about region-locking possibly making them money.
The first four and a half lines of the answer are pure bullshit. The only thing that isn't is that it's for the sellers sake and not the customer. And ofcourse you choose to look at the only thing that isn't crap instead of the statement as a whole, which is crap. |
I get it from seeing you around the forum. You've been anti-Nintendo plenty. But think what you want. Those are completely valid reasons why region locking could save money. You say they're crap, yet you don't seem to have any idea why they did it. You just think region locking doesn't make money. Whether you think the reasons they gave are not enough to make region locking worth it or not, it doesn't change the fact that the reasons they gave do have actual costs. Copyrights and licensing issues are a very real cost. Localizing games costs money and region locking ensure buyers get the game that Nintendo paid good money to tailor to them by localizing it. Less measurable is the effect of buyers purchasing games that aren't localized for them on the strength of the brand, in terms of buyer's opinions of the quality of Nintendo games when they get games that are in their language but contain phrases only used in another region that speaks that language. Also hard to measure is the effect of ineffective marketing from regional issues on the momentum of the games (though I'd personally say this generation has shown them they have a bigger problem with marketing than just issues caused by being region free). All I'm saying is that this really was their reasoning, however flawed you think it is, and quite honestly, being region free does not affect most people. It affects people who can read other languages that want to get games sooner in other languages that release sooner, it affects people who want to get games that only release in a certain region, and it affects people who live in smaller countries that Nintendo doesn't give as much support to that feel the need to buy systems or games from outside the country. Not a lot of people in those demographics, really. Quite honestly, I don't think having been region free from the beginning would have gotten Nintendo any significant amount of money, save perhaps from whatever they'd get from better publicity. In the DS and GBA days, they would get more from having things region free because back then a LOT of games didn't make it to certain regions. Now we often get simultaneous worldwide releases or releases withing a matter of months at the most, and almost every game gets localized.
