Fresh from the news that the Vita is region-free, let's have a serious discussion about why, in 2011, the other companies (and other industries) continue to insist that region locking is a necessity.

It used to not bother me before, but the constant whining that Nintendo region-locks their consoles because they hate foreign money is driving me up the wall. By the same token, I don't think anyone realizes the sacrifices that Sony made to make their system region-free. Region locking is not about caring about the customers or pandering to the minorities. I don't claim to know exactly what they're intended to protect, but I do know that part of it is economical: keeping domestic money in their original regions is best for all involved.

People think that just because they can or don't need to read Japanese, they shouldn't be stopped from playing Japanese games at all. They may not mind the potentially offensive cultural dissonance, but they forget that they're not the ones looking out for the children. And even in the case of those games that don't require a lot of reading, I wouldn't put those games without a completely English interface by default on store shelves. They exist, but the entire game market won't change just for them.

My main problem with people fighting over it is that they're all fighting the wrong people. Region locking is much more an economic and political issue than a business issue and yet people only seem intent on fighting Microsoft and Nintendo rather than the causes that made them think they're necessary. It makes them come off as selfish and ignorant of world perceptions of video games and I don't believe that's good for anyone, least of all the minority of gamers who actually care about them. It's nice to have options and to not have to be restricted about things like this, but the industry was built from the start to keep markets segregated. We're starting to slowly see change away from this tradition, but forcing it upon anyone isn't going to solve a thing. Until the majority of customers start specifically demanding it (they don't, not by a long shot), nothing will change. Sony is leading the charge. Good for them, they get a few extra sales. But the truth is that the vast majority of gamers won't care, and so there's no incentive for anyone to actually follow through.

Please tell me there's more to it than this.

Is Nintendo enforcing it themselves? I always thought that the only reason the handhelds before 3DS didn't have region locks was that they didn't have the means to enforce it at the time.

Syd Lexia wrote:

Also, I don't know about this, but I've been told that the PS3 is NOT region-free. Instead, it uses a new region system designed for Blu-Ray where Japan and North America are both considered the same region. So Japanese games play on a North America PS3, but do NOT play on Australian or European PS3. Blu-Ray has only three regions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Region_codes

That's what I keep telling people. It was declared from day 1 that the Blu-Ray standard will have regions different from those of DVD. It's not that Sony doesn't region lock, they just do it differently. And it happens to benefit you [Americans] directly, so you don't have a reason to complain (if you even notice it's there). Does that not bother anyone else immensely?

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Operation Rainfall thinks that they're such big shots and that critical praise and high sales in foreign markets are all it takes to guarantee similar numbers in America when that's very rarely the case. If they're not actually doing more harm than good like I think they are, then they're simply wasting their time.

[Edit]I did some research and it turns out that due to pressure from certain governments, PS3 games actually are region-free. Makes you wonder why those governments don't pressure the other companies to do the same.

Also, here's another one regarding a certain JRPG that was released recently in Europe. People seem to think that just because a game is already out in English elsewhere, it would be trivial to send it to America. And yet they don't, because it's oh so hard to remove the "U"s from "color". What nobody seems to be telling them is that it's oh so hard to clear the international distribution rights to the English voice track because it wasn't recorded in America. We have to thank our lucky stars every time a game retains its Japanese track if it wasn't recorded in-house, because the companies that bother with that make it a point to not explain how hard it is to keep them in international releases.