Geez, ATLUS can't win for losing. They listened to their audience and provided Dual audio for this game, while still releasing the Japanese and U.S. versions a week apart, and they still catch hell. They knew that their Japanese audience could just buy the U.S. version of the game for $30 less, and from a business perspective, region-locking was the solution that made the most sense.

Region locking sucks and EU has been getting the short end of the stick for quite some time now (Mostly with PS Store offerings), but they've already explained that this will not be a common practice for them.

I'm not getting this game because there are only 13 characters, but it's silly to me to boycott a company (a small one at that) for making an intelligent business move.

Thats how I feel. They can't win with some fans.

No-one is talking about boycotting all releases of Atlus; it's only about this game. And it's not silly at all, it's in order to protect our freedom. And not buying the game is to show them that region-locking a game on a system that never had any region locked games before is not an intelligent business move, it's a stupid move and a slap in the face of their fans, a move that should cost them money in order to prevent them or anyone else from repeating it.

As explained at length, it is quite a big deal. You don't go rewarding people who slap you in the face and take away your freedom. So no, don't buy it.

As much as I love Atlus games to bits, we have been getting the short end of the stick for ages in EU, so its nothing new. Games either don't release at all here or release, at times, years later than their US counterparts. Even P4U would have been released maybe years later if not for us hardcore fighting game fanatics requesting Arc System Works EU branch for days to pick up this game because Atlus just wouldn't care otherwise.

Plus this region locking has been screwing me over from day one because I'm on 360, so again its nothing new. Its sad but thats just how it is. Although I don't condone greed, but Atlus games don't sell nearly as much as they should despite being so good. So I really can't say much against them for making some money.

This is definitely disheartening. I do not own a PS3 and am really not interested in the game in question.
But I can tell you that incompatibility across regions -- be it because of technical issues or be it because of management decisions -- has been around since the Atari 2600. And ways to get around it, from vertical hold to cheat carts -- have been around almost as long.

Hopefully, one day, we will get to a world of simultaneous, world-wide, region-free releases. There are Wii games, both retail and download, that I cannot play because they never made it to North America. So we just need to tell companies what we want ... and keep telling them until they listen. And maybe part of that is delay in buying games by a week to show the power of the pocket book.

Mike from Morgantown

Atlus does a lot for their fans and this isnt a slap in th face its a smart business move so they can continue to do for themselves and their fans. You want them to take less profits so japanese players can import the game from america and cause atlus less sales. This is in no way greed. Greed would be releasing outfits that were just color changes for a hgih price and they were already on the disc. tlus games dont even sell incredibly well so let them get all they can. If you wanna talk about a slap in the face look at some of these toher companies who are not putting enough content in the game or are releasing sorry dlc for high proces. We should complain about that some more lol. 

I don't think a week is enough. Don't buy offending games AT ALL so it really hurts, and let the publishers know why you don't buy.

Honestly, that's a piss poor argument. I understand for other reasons, but dual audio is not a premium feature. It's a standard that every other publisher has been including for years and it's quite silly that this Atlus' reaction to some 'service' they're providing by including features they should never have been in the talk of exclusion.

It would be a bad argument if that was their sole reason. They provided dual audio in conjunction with a short gap in-between the Japanese and U.S. release dates. With the Yen to U.S. dollar ratio being as it is, their Japanese consumers are paying $90.00 for games while Americans pay $60.00. If they didn't region lock this game, nothing would really stop Japanese gamers from just buying the U.S. version of the game.

Had they not implemented dual audio or the currencies were closer in value, they wouldn't have even bothered to do a region lock, but dual audio is apparently what's been requested of them by enough of their fan base and the economy is out of their control.