bungiefan

@25

Just because you don't understand Japanese doesn't mean there's going to be a language barrier for you to play Japanese games. There are plenty of games that stay import-only for various reasons, but have little-to-no language barrier to be able to play them well.

My friends and I regularly play the Guilty Gear games, which the latest version is still Japan-only, and we have no problem playing it, since fighting games don't have much text you need to be able to read. We also play Twinkle Star Sprites La Petite Princess, Touhou Phantasmagoria of Flower View, Rhythm Tengoku, Battle Stadium DON, Melty Blood Act Cadenza, and many other imports. Half of my PS2 collection is Japanese games right now, and I'm still not fluent in the language, but only the RPGs are really hard to play like that.

For Europeans and Australians, region free would be a godsend, with all the games that get an American release but not a PAL release, or get the PAL release nearly a year later. They'd be able to get games in a language they understand, earlier and cheaper than their domestic versions. Region free is the way it should be in truly free trade market. I'm not forced to apply an American movie rating to VHS tapes and DVDs (even those set to region ALL) that I buy from Japan, so it's ridiculous to expect European rating systems to apply to American versions of games if they are region free.

@31 That's not being a curmudgeon. That's using common sense. By definition, the console isn't region free unless it doesn't enforce region locks. If the games have to be region free for the situation, than it's the media that CAN be region free, and noth the CONSOLE that is region free. That's like trying to market a standard DVD player as region free because it can play DVDs marked with a region of ALL, which EVERY DVD player can do, even though it can't play region 2 discs if the player is from region 1. The only DVDs players sold as region free will ignore the regional designation of the discs and will play any video DVD with any regional marking.

All consoles since the NES have not been region free, excepting handhelds. The Xbox and the 360 have been the first consoles to at least have a region free designation as an option for games, but that option is rarely taken. That has only brought them on par with standard DVD regions, but not truly up to region free.

Region free cannot give the people making the product the option of locking the content to a region. If they have the option, calling the hardware region free is an oxymoron.

"15. Skullfire:

Ok, but the PSP is region free, and ALL the games on it are region free. Therefor, I think that Sony might have one definition of the term, and Microsoft another.

Kind of like the 1080p thing earlier today. One says it's possible, the other says it's impossible."

No, they just have different means of implementing the regional lockout. Xbox/360 has a region code for each region, and a region code that counts as all regions. The system will only play games with the code from its region, or games with the code for all regions. Thus, the games can be regionless, but the system isn't.

With the PSP, the games are coded to region, but the system doesn't care what region code it sees for games as long as one is present, so the system is regionless but the games aren't.

The PS3 will probably implement the same type of regionless play as the PSP does, which would also allow play of imported PS1 and PS2 games, since it only has to detect one of the four game region codes (NTSC J, NTSC U/C, NTSC C, or PAL) but doesn't have to discriminate based on which one it detects.