Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DS Handheld to be Region Free

Posted by Zonk on from the one-people-under-two-screens dept.

Thanks to GamingHeadlines for the news that DS games are not going to be region restricted. "Although this news may not specifically cater to American and Japanese folks, it certainly gives us Europeans the benefit of importing our DS systems from abroad..." I certainly think it caters to US gamers. Imported Japanese games can lead to wonderful things.

2 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Region locked? by kingsmedley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To the best of my knowledge, the only region locked handhelds were the TurboExpress and the Nomad. But it should be pointed out that both these units were actually handheld versions of home game consoles (TurboGrafx-16 and Genesis, respectfully), and as such inherited their regional locks.

    I've never understood why regional locks seem to be so crucial to the software models of home game consoles, and yet so undesirable in the portable market. The only reason I can see for the difference is to cater to international travellers. Are the sales to inter-region travels really that significant?

    --
    Must... think up... something... clever!
  2. Re:Certainly good for the British by WWWWolf · · Score: 2, Interesting
    European released carts always have a language selector, which delays access to the game. I'm sure this is something to do with a laudable EU superstate free trade regulation from Brussels, but it certainly annoys the hell out of me.

    Wouldn't be so sure. I'm pretty sure some EU countries have specific legislation that says that manuals and packaging have to be translated, but I'm pretty sure it's not an EU-wide law.

    For comparison, almost all of PC games released in Finland have English packaging and manuals. Some distributors/importers thoughtfully provide installation instructions in Finnish - I have a vague recollection that this was a recommendation from the consumer ombudsman - but full-blown localisation of the game is really rare.

    And even so, on Gamecube and GBA, I only see games with translations from Nintendo and pretty rarely from other publishers - the bigger the publisher the more likely there's German and French game translations. I have several games with only English game text, though. It's even more blatant with manuals - here Nintendo seems to be the only game publisher that provides Finnish manuals, though some games only come with a paper sheet with a summary.

    Um, in short, it's a publisher's fault, not EU's. =)

    But I agree that failure to publish due to language problems is pretty silly. (or maybe that's just an opinion from someone from a country that would be a localizer's nightmare, but luckily the inhabitants have grown used to missing localization =)