I have been looking for an answer to this question but haven't been able to find it ....

Most of you probably don't know this but games are released in different regions. Some are released in PAL (EU, AU), soms in NTSC (US & JAP) and some are so called Region Free. Sometimes I prefer to order the 'Region Free' ones because they are cheaper to buy eventhough it takes longer to receive. (due to international shipping).

Here's my question: Why doesn't EA release 'Region Free' games for the Xbox 360 where it does release them for the PS3?

Is it because there's some agreement on it? (= they are getting paid for it?) Or is there some other reason for it?

Just so you know, a lot of big publisher release 'Region Free' games like Red Dead Redemption, Alan Wake, etc, etc..

Isn't the 360 Region restricted?

It's because of piracy my friend like FF13 is u make that baby region free on 360. Than 3 ppl will buy it for 360 about 10 ppl for ps3 but about 5 million ppl will get their hands on it due to piracy. But I could be just exagerating.

As for EA n Sony I have no clue

About Region free I'd tend to agree its to do with Piracy. However after seeing the PSP go against the DS I do know that EA prefers Sony to Nintendo. I mean seriously their software doesn't sell all that well on PSP and the hardware is less then half of the DS's marketshare. Yet you see EA supporting the crap out of PSP and not so much DS. Even with the DS EAGames still focuses almost entirely on the PS3/360 with the exception of BoomBlox which wasn't EA's idea to begin with it was Spielberg's.

Does EA prefer Sony to Microsoft? I'm not sure both consoles recieve the same titles. So I dunno!

360 / Wii (I know this isn't about the Wii) is region locked afaik. PS3 isn't, which is why I am finding it harder and harder not to buy a PS3 (live in a NTSC place, might move back to a PAL place)

Edit: by region locked, its standard practice for devs to release them locked(didnt even know there was unlocked games so this is news to me!), sony I believe has a policy to make it so they all have to be unlocked, I believe part of the logic behind doing this is so if / when mod chips are released, they cant use the defence 'just doing it to play stuff from out of region'

Bluray is region free. DVD's are not. All a question of format used by the companies. Nothing hidden here. PS2 games were region bound just like 360.

BluRays do have regions, although do not anywhere near the regions that DVD's do (3? compared to 6? or so), this however has nothing to do with the console being region locked.   In saying that a lot of Blu Rays arn't region locked afaik, unlike in the DVD era

Yes I really meant to say that Bluray disks are not region locked.

Probably not.

They need to pay for more coders to make slighly inferior versions of their games and they had to spend millions on blu-ray presses to sell the fewest copies. They probably only like them for Fifa occasionally, but curse them for everything else.

blu ray disks work on any blu ray no matter where u get ur disk or hardware although there r some kinda different coding going on since i got CoD MW2 pal for ps3 (from london) and i got stimulus pack from US store and it doesnt work ^^ although it does work when i put in my friends CD thats from USA