PlayStation Home's public areas region locked

68 Comments by Ross Miller Jul 17th 2008 12:00AM
Filed under: Culture, Sony PlayStation 3

Looking to go virtual bowling with your South African friends in PlayStation Home? Think again! According to a Sony representative at E3, Home will be region locked. While you can visit anyone's private apartment, all public pavilions are restricted by your geographical area.

Tags: breakingnews, e3, e3-2008, home, ps-home

Source

(Page 1) Reader Comments

Demo: Jul 17th 2008; 12:03AM

Really? I guess that does it for me. I have no friends that have a ps3 in my country.

Night Elve: Jul 17th 2008; 12:42AM

That's a bit sad :(

Demo: Jul 17th 2008; 12:43AM

For the record, my country is Argentina, not the UK as my picture suggests.

bm: Jul 17th 2008; 7:15AM

"That's a bit sad :("

It's sad that a group of friends does not have PS3's? Frankly, I don't think it's anything to cry about.

ButtonMashers.tv: Jul 17th 2008; 12:03AM

I thought E3 was for good announcements, Jack Trenton must still be a lil' bit tipsy.

Hardcore: Jul 17th 2008; 12:05AM

Good, I wouldn't want any of those dirty South Africans mucking up my Home.

I kid I kid.

ThePerfectCompanion: Jul 17th 2008; 12:16AM

Lol I was so afraid you were serious for a moment there...

SimbaDogg: Jul 17th 2008; 1:38AM

thats an asshole comment, even for you lumberg

Hardcore: Jul 17th 2008; 2:26AM

Ah Yeahhh, I'm going to need you to go ahead and get a sense of humor.

Tim The Enchanter: Jul 17th 2008; 1:09PM

Hey, they can still muck up your home, their lions eating your internet cables. It's just the public places you can't access. At least, that's my interpretation.

Didn't you read the memo?

Flit: Jul 17th 2008; 9:12PM

Ludwig.... LUUUUUUUUD-VIIIIIIIIIIIG!

Where's your Lion now?

007craft: Jul 17th 2008; 12:06AM

Whats playstation home? Oh I just googled it, it came up with results along with Duke nukem forever and starcraft ghost.

Kspraydad: Jul 17th 2008; 12:32AM

I just googled 'witty' ... didn't find you AT ALL.

zeldazeppelin: Jul 17th 2008; 2:34AM

dude why bring up starcraft ghost man I had that game fully paid for and it never came then the indef postponed man. no Im starting to cry /c i want this game to happen so badly man

007craft: Jul 17th 2008; 2:41AM

And I googled jackass, and there you were.

MasterCKO: Jul 17th 2008; 2:46AM

I google jackass, too. Funny enough, you were there, as well.

SoCoolCurt (PSN: KillaKornbread): Jul 17th 2008; 2:55AM

lol @ Kspraydad

i decree, you win the internets for today lol.

bm: Jul 17th 2008; 7:17AM

I googled "bunch of dorks" and I found ALL OF YOU. I swear, there was a list.

Smoke_Dawg_187: Jul 17th 2008; 12:09AM

I don't see that as a big deal.

Ridgecity: Jul 17th 2008; 12:24AM

it is if you don't live in U.S./Canada/Mexico or Europe and that means you probably won't meet anybody from across any ocean.

And probably North America means "U.S. only" Canada and Mexico will not get any stuff.

aalien: Jul 17th 2008; 11:25AM

Oh yeah.
Don't play in OUR sandbox, you silly Europeans/Australians/Africans/Whatever.

All hail the region-locked Internet!

Xero: Jul 17th 2008; 3:57AM

well i am in the military and live in okinawa for the next 2 and a half years, so i see it as a big f****** deal. first msoft screws us servicemembers out of half the content on live, then sony follows suit. f*** both of them.

Seanross: Jul 17th 2008; 5:19AM

Its Huge Deal, I meet tons of people over seas while playing online with various games, especially when I played FFXI. Sony dropped the ball and then kicked it over the fence for good measure... are they competing?

Huey2k2: Jul 17th 2008; 12:12AM

Ummm... That seems like a really weird choice :\

BananaBoat: Jul 17th 2008; 12:48AM

Not really. I realize as well as anyone else that it's all about the marketing (the US sector has marketing for the US, Europe for Europe, etc), but it's also a tiny bit about keeping ping times as low as humanly possible. I've got friends in the UK and Japan, but I could care less for meeting random foreign strangers in the 10 seconds total I'll spend in home per day (just long enough to launch a game), and it sounds like those foreign friends would have no problem coming into my private area (....wait for it....waaaaaaitttt forrrrrr itttttttt)

E.J.: Jul 17th 2008; 4:53AM

@BananaBoat

Actually, Sony most likely has the tech to do region-targeted marketing where different ads will show depending on your IP's location.

This is probably to ensure a quality experience in Home. An example could be to prevent lag when interacting with people. Another could be for licensing/regulatory issues when showing video like trailers, movies and music vids when it's not approved for that region/country. Sony probably doesn't want someone walking around with half the vid screens saying "can't access content from this region".

Ethan: Jul 17th 2008; 7:46AM

You can't play with timmy! Timmy is in a different marketing demographic.

Xzyliac: Jul 17th 2008; 12:14AM

Really? Weird. I always applauded the PS3 for keeping everything region-free. It was one of my main excuses for buyin' one. That sucks. I wouldn't use it but it seems kind of inconsistent of Sony. Wonder what their reasoning is behind all this.

Superstar90: Jul 17th 2008; 1:21AM

I think it's because of the advertisements in the geographical areas. Companies are paying to advertise to a specific country, so they don't want the people that they COULD be advertising to to go to another country's area.

Like say Rockstar advertises GTA in the US home region, but that same space is taken by some Gundam game in the Japan region. Rockstar paid for advertisements to the US home players and paid for it by the popularity and traffic in the home region, so they don't want all their potential viewers to go elsewhere.

Sorry if that sounds confusing, I'm terrible with wording.

DigTheDoug: Jul 17th 2008; 1:37AM

A decent theory, but the advertising would have been geotargetted, like it is on your cable or on most websites. It would be pretty unnacceptable to a lot of advertisers if they couldn't handle something as basic as that.

My guess is that it may be more because games are released in different regions at different times they may not want people to be able to see trophies or minigames or whatever else they could have planned for games months before it ever even comes out in their region, if at all.

Talryyn: Jul 17th 2008; 12:17AM

I can see why this is, but who cares about the movie theater, this is just going to be used for teens by teens right?!? If I want to go bowling with my friend in Australia, then I thought that was what Home was all about. Now I get the feeling this is some huge marketing deal, Nike Lobby, Dell World, Blu-Ray Land, etc.

So many things I like about Home, so many things I don't like. The one that I dislike the most is the unknown that every lobby might be filled with "US!"...

I shudder to think what would happen! ;)

Dwag: Jul 17th 2008; 12:25AM

I don't see this effecting anyone until they announce a Delay then they would look stupid for having a system in development for 3+ years just to MS make a system and release it in just a short amount of time.

FSK405K: Jul 17th 2008; 12:26AM

WTF? Good thing my global friends are on X360 instead.

Talryyn: Jul 17th 2008; 12:32AM

Jack did say that they need time to fill all the open space they created, so I guess they need the McDonald's Pavilion, the Taco Bell Hut, the I really should just go to sleep post lobby.

Kspraydad: Jul 17th 2008; 12:35AM

As I understand it HOME with have movies and music directly available for purchase in the public areas...so, just like the Video store launched yesterday you can than the movie and music studios for this restriction.

You can still meet up with you friends in your apartment.

Or you can not use HOME and continue on with XMB like you are now.

Sesur: Jul 17th 2008; 12:36AM

this does not shock me. That kind of networking costs money.

Kspraydad: Jul 17th 2008; 12:37AM

Hi Casper. F-off please. Here is my SSN number 504487287 and my accounts are at IndyMac. Have fun.

Night Elve: Jul 17th 2008; 12:46AM

@Kspraydad

Holy shit man for one second I thought you wrote "Here's my SSH account".

Korean: Jul 17th 2008; 12:58AM

They should just go by city, that way the sex predators have it easier finding you.

Ninjakamster (PS360 FTW!): Jul 17th 2008; 1:08AM

This seems like a silly idea since online gaming is basically region free. : (

Damn it Sony, first you kill backwards compatibility altogether and now this?

fritzilla: Jul 17th 2008; 1:26AM

I think it does boil down to marketing. They have basically said they are filling it in with things like game hubs (Warhawk command center), Resitance room, Nike lobby, etc...

I say, just charge for the service (PSN) so I don't have to endure delays and watch home be perverted into an advertisement haven.

Hell, if they would charge, they might actually have a compelling reason to launch it.

John: Jul 17th 2008; 2:08AM

Yeah, but in the End US Military personell will get fucked over again.

It's great that despite having a US address, US credit card, Creating my account in the US on a US PS3 and 360, I'm stuck with whatever they plan to offer for italians.

And since Italy is such a wonderful place for violating copyright, I'm guessing the offerings will be slim.

Region encoding fucks over 10s of thousands of Americans living overseas.

Fuck region encoding and Fuck you MS and Sony for implementing it.

Mathilda: Jul 17th 2008; 2:22AM

can't you get around region coding via proxy?

isobelle: Jul 17th 2008; 3:25AM

if you

isobelle: Jul 17th 2008; 3:26AM

love lag, yeah.

Procris: Jul 17th 2008; 2:41AM

I think most of us realistically saw something like this coming. Unless they had different servers you and your friends could connect to and be together. Actually, that would have been a better way of doing it.

Michael: Jul 17th 2008; 5:03AM

I dont mind meeting total strangers as long as the actions of the avatar include "insult", "shove" and "punch"

Denis Vitchevsky: Jul 17th 2008; 5:04AM

Oh boy, Israeli users will be thrilled!

Jonah Falcon: Jul 17th 2008; 5:28AM

1. PSN is free, so you have no right to complain.

2. If you want open regions, Sony has to buy servers. Servers cost money. You'll have to pay a fee to use them.

Either you have free PSN and this or you pay for it and get better service.

Tamer Brad: Jul 18th 2008; 12:25AM

Yeah, it's not like people are paying for a console here!

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.