Nintendo 3DS

[Etra]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

Well, let's assume that was really it. If it amounted to a few more weeks or months of waiting, couldn't one just wait it out? I mean, sure, its frustrating to know something is out there in English and you can't have it yet, but that's not a reason to steal something. They knew it was coming.

Yeahhhhh... They did pirate the game because of having to wait for weeks to get the game that was already readily available in English. I know with music (I tend to listen to a lot of European artists), the albums will come out take at least a week before they are made available here. For example, Yelle's new album was made available on the 14th in France. USA won't get it until the 29th. And, guess what, I downloaded the album. I'll still buy it, I buy all my music, but I will pirate the album first because I want it asap.

As for the PSP example, I'm not sure what happened with that entire sysetm. I honestly don't know anyone that has one that doesn't have it modded in some way. For the DS and PS3, though, I know more people that import games than I know that pirate them. /shrug

[Kailea]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

I might have to resort to doing somthing similer, but it will be more like copying

There are a good number of SE games that are not on PSN, and I have a Go -.- If this continues I might start buying the games physicly, and downloading the ISOs for my Go and use my homebrew thingy I have to play them. Right now all I use the homebrew for is GB/GBC/GBA emulation. and to use my Go as a second monitor for my PC (wireless monitor ;p) to keep an eye on NMs I might be hunting in FFXI (it also doubles as a remote control)

Pirating will always be there, and you will have your "honest" Pirates and your "dishonest" I see myself as an honest pirate, I only do emulation of systems and games no longer sold new physically in stores, or I might copy a game I have already to play in a different manner.

As far as the 3DS I will just have to wait and see, will most likely follow my current routine for DS, buy the import, place it on shelf, download rom, load emulator ;p

[Armando]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

Additionally, how many copies of Dissidia: Final Fantasy were pirated as soon the JP version was out? Again, hundreds of thousands and this system is region-free. People could have just imported or signed up for a Japanese PSN account and got it that way.

You really think these people wouldn't just have pirated the NA release instead if the PSP were region-locked and there wasn't a way to disable region-locking through homebrew?

My issue with your arguments is that you base them around the people that will always pirate regardless. What's the point in discussing them, since it's obvious they'll pirate as long as there's a means to do so? Region-locking doesn't prevent piracy so you've fixed nothing. The only "extra" piracy you prevent is JP-only games - but then again not really, because they're going to have hacked consoles. But you also prevented importers from buying it - you know, people that were actually going to pay for your shit.

No matter how you spin it, you're hurting importers and doing very little to deter pirates.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

My issue with your arguments is that you base them around the people that will always pirate regardless. What's the point in discussing them, since it's obvious they'll pirate as long as there's a means to do so?

Then you concede those people don't need a reason, yes? They're just jerks no matter what.

So why is it OK when you have a reason? Pirating was wrong before.

Region-locking doesn't prevent piracy so you've fixed nothing. The only "extra" piracy you prevent is JP-only games - but then again not really, because they're going to have hacked consoles. But you also prevented importers from buying it - you know, people that were actually going to pay for your shit.

It may not stop piracy, but don't think it doesn't curb it a bit. I've looked at what it takes to copy a PSP game, which clearly means I've considered it and I've looked at Sony's recent aggressive stance and decided its just not worth risking my PSP getting bricked for. Those people doing it thought they'd never get caught and now some of them have.

FFXI was never fully able to stop RMT, but they certainly did frustrate and discourage a great number of groups from doing so. Even got a number of people to leave. And sure, there were groups they never fully got rid of because they were going to RMT to the bitter end.

And yep, legitimate fishermen did get negatively affected by SE's actions, but what was the alternative - having GMs babysit fishing areas all day, checking to see who's real and who's not? SE was fully in their rights to do what they did with fishing fatigue - its their game.

This is starting to sound totally familiar isn't it?

-----------------------------------

That aside, I got to check out the 3DS today at Best Buy - seems that's where Nintendo's showing most of them of, but the 3DS site has info on locations.

It had Pilotwings Resort on it and I tried it out for about 10 mins since the place was pretty empty (March Madness in NC means everything is dead this week). First thing I did was tweak the depth slider. Full was too much, but about halfway was perfect.

It doesn't feel so much like things are jumping out at you - more like you're able to see deeper "inside" the game, if that makes sense. The Mii on the hanglider felt close to you and you could actually get a real good idea of where the rings you needed to fly through were while in a game without the effect you might misjudge the distance a bit easily.

It is really something you have to see to realize the benefits. I know a lot of people dismiss 3D because of the 3D movie fad, but games have been rendered in 3D by nature for years and still had that lack of depth, having to rely on shadowing to give you the proper sense of distance.

Circle pad felt good and while I thought the D-Pad might feel too low, it felt alright for where it was, I'll get a better idea with SSFIV later this week, though maybe the circle pad will prove sufficient there as well.

I should also note that I experienced no eyestrain at the medium/lower settings, but did experience thighstrain because the demo unit was placed too low. So what if kids want to look at it? Let them wait til they're taller.

[Kailea]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

yeah I decided to wait, manager said we where getting a 3DS demo in this week, so when I go to work FRI I will check it out.... then SUN *drools*

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

Yeah, I got the 3DS and SSFIV paid off tonight, gonna pick up Pilotwings with it since that turned out to be pretty fun.

[Kailea]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

only game I reserved was Bust a Move ;p but I am still thinking of picking up something else.

[Armando]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

Then you concede those people don't need a reason, yes? They're just jerks no matter what.

Yes, some pirates don't need a reason.

I've looked at what it takes to copy a PSP game, which clearly means I've considered it and I've looked at Sony's recent aggressive stance and decided its just not worth risking my PSP getting bricked for.

They'd have to jump through those hoops to copy the game whether the PSP is region-locked or not. Again, how are you stopping them? Once they've gotten through the hurdle of hacking the console, working around region-locking takes minimal effort unless there's actual hardware differences involved. Hell, you could play games from other regions on your GameCube with just an Action Replay. Sometimes you don't need to hack the console at all.

You want consoles that are harder to hack, not region-locked ones.

[Feba]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

exactly. Like I thought I said, I don't know if I ever got around to writing that post or not, but look at the PS3. People were mostly able to play games region-free, and they were able to run homebrew on it in a way that didn't hurt the console, and there was basically zero ability to pirate. As soon as SE took away the ability to run your own code, the PS3 was hacked successfully. The PSP from the beginning was region free, yes, but it too lacked the ability to run homebrew code. Same with the Wii. Hackers want to run code on things for the sake of running code on things. To that end, they will get around locks to running code; many simply for the fun of defeating the locks. When you give them a reason to start opening up locks, they'll get to it pretty quickly. When you give them the toys they want, they'll stop caring.

When you have a system with people past the locks, in the context of "I can run code on this system", it's very simple to extend that to cross-region games and codes. When you have to open up the ability to run unwanted code in order to run games from other regions, you're going to be far more tempted to run unwanted code for free.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

You can really only get there if they give you the means. The R4 wasn't really a hack so much as an exploit and no one got their own firmware to run on a DSi, at least not that I know of. Wii got cracked because of an exploit found in the Twilight Princess disc.

Sony igives them the means pretty directly since they allow for USB support and, as such thumb drives and memory sticks.

So far "hackers" have only gotten R4 to work on 3DS for DS games. Given that the system has to recognize DS carts, that's not a stretch - thing is once they get that to work, the 3DS logs it and they can remote brick you because that information is shared online and with other players when you do Spotpass/StreetPass. Miis get tagged over with Street Pass and the Friends List, too. So Nintendo can make someone else your snitch, basically - all someone has to do is go online.

Anyway, what really gets me about this stink people are raising over this is that the region lock exists, but it does not seem to apply across the board. It seems the final decision still rests with the developer.

3DS News: Nintendo 3DS: Region lock a 'possibility' for some software - ComputerAndVideoGames.com

I must add that I think you guys think too small about region-locking. When you just straight import from Japan because you assume it to be "better" because its in Japanese or because you assume it will "never" come to America - all you're really doing is contributing to feedback that it may not need to come to America.

Your purchases are not flagged as "American" or "European" or whatever. They're counted as Japanese sales. Chances are also that you're not going to double-dip on the western version. I didn't need a Gamecube version of Soul Calibur II once i had imported it.

And there's your other reason for a region lock - if you plan to make it an international release, you may genuinely want some feedback, but if you're not planning a western release, then those numbers don't matter and that developer might not region lock the game.

PS3 did have a couple of region locked-games via software lock, Metal Gear Online was one of them. And I think it was for the reasons I just stated - Konami wanted to see the numbers. Maybe MGO would be a good long-term investment it people played it enough and it became popular enough, but it didn't seem to hold out. Plus I believe there was once a payment structure for more than one account. Once you start getting into that, you have to take regions into consideration.

Phantasy Star Portable 2 on PSP is also technically region-locked in that we can't play with JP players on the JP servers. It seems to go against the international nature of the series, but I suspect its pretty much the same deal because there was no reason to do that otherwise. It didn't sell all that well and Sega of America has said nothing about bringing Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity to the west.

Sales do affect the future of a game franchise in particular regions. When you import a Tales game - for whatever reason you have - you're decreasing the chance of a western release if they do the math and see US or EU copies are not selling. A company like Square-Enix might be able to brush off importers as inconsequential to their western sales, but smaller devs not so much.

[Armando]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

Sony igives them the means pretty directly since they allow for USB support and, as such thumb drives and memory sticks.

Sony gives them the means because they use the same keys for all their PS3s and PSPs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if it hadn't been for that, the hackers may not have cracked the PS3's security.

I must add that I think you guys think too small about region-locking. When you just straight import from Japan because you assume it to be "better" because its in Japanese or because you assume it will "never" come to America - all you're really doing is contributing to feedback that it may not need to come to America.

Your purchases are not flagged as "American" or "European" or whatever. They're counted as Japanese sales. Chances are also that you're not going to double-dip on the western version. I didn't need a Gamecube version of Soul Calibur II once i had imported it.

I'm seriously confused here. First you say that by importing you're sending feedback that the game may not need to come to America, then you say your purchase is flagged as Japanese. EDIT: Disregard, I understand now. You're saying that if the game is available in both regions, you importing reflects as higher JP sales and lower NA sales.

Chances are also that you're not going to double-dip on the western version. I didn't need a Gamecube version of Soul Calibur II once i had imported it.

Soul Calibur is a fighting game. Not understanding Japanese is hardly a hindrance there.

I would think more people import games that *don't* get released in the US than games than games that do. Or at least I'd hope so. But I don't know about that. But if you're going to base your argument on the fact that some people are going to import the JP version of games that also get released in the US, I'd argue that region-locking will make them resort to hacking the console to get around it. These are people that want the JP version no matter what.

Since there's almost always going to be a way to hack a console, you want to give people as few incentives as possible to try it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

I'm seriously confused here. First you say that by importing you're sending feedback that the game may not need to come to America, then you say your purchase is flagged as Japanese.

What's so confusing about it? You import and it IS counted as a Japanese sale. Doesn't matter if you made the purchase on the internet or where you are - that game was already sold to the retailer, remember? The retailer is the middle-man just looking to make his money back with a markup to keep the store open.

Soul Calibur is a fighting game. Not understanding Japanese is hardly a hindrance there.

That's not even the point, I bought the Japanese version, so that's feedback they didn't get for the US release.

Lots of people imported SCII because the Gamecube didn't even need to be modded, unlike PS2 - you just needed a boot disc to switch it to Japanese mode. A great number of fighting enthusiasts that played it in the arcade and knew it wasn't coming for several months to the US, so they imported it. Language wasn't the reason we did it, it was so we could stop dumping tokens into an arcade machine.

The Gamecube version was still #2 to the PS2 version in sales, Xbox a distant third but those GC importers may have very well prevented the Gamecube from getting SCIII, because SCII's GC sales were pretty damn close with PS2 because lots of people wanted Link rather than Spawn or Heihachi.

And I should note that I did also buy the NA versions for PS2 and Xbox later so I could have it on any system my friends preferred.

[Armando]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

What's so confusing about it? You import and it IS counted as a Japanese sale. Doesn't matter if you made the purchase on the internet or where you are - that game was already sold to the retailer, remember? The retailer is the middle-man just looking to make his money back with a markup to keep the store open.

It was confusing because I naturally think of JP-only titles when talking about importing.

That's not even the point, I bought the Japanese version, so that's feedback they didn't get for the US release.

Yes, but in that sense, fighters are exceptions to the rule. They don't require language, so they can be imported easily and you get nearly the same experience. Convince me that a lot of people import JRPGs that WILL get an NA release. Don't make a case for Tales games because Namco is notorious for not bringing their games to the US.

You still haven't addressed the crux of the argument: you're just giving people one more incentive to turn to hacking the console. If you're going to base the argument on people that want to import JP games for the sake of having the JP version and not because there isn't an NA version, then these people will try to play their JP games through whatever means possible.

[Aeni]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

Me thinks 3rd party devs pressured the big N to create region lockouts this time around. Whatever the motivation, this is a step backward for everyone involved with this hardware - players, devs and publishers.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS

You still haven't addressed the crux of the argument: you're just giving people one more incentive to turn to hacking the console. If you're going to base the argument on people that want to import JP games for the sake of having the JP version and not because there isn't an NA version, then these people will try to play their JP games through whatever means possible

That's because you keep making excuses for going around it. There are no incentives, just excuses. You keep looking at region lock as a way of stopping you from what you want. Right now, what the hell is there to want that's Japan-only on 3DS?

We won't even know if the region lock is 100% by friday because there's not enough games to make that assessment and most of them are universal releases. You could try Professor Layton if someone had the import, but that might be region locked since it will most certainly come to the west down the road.

You're real test would be the games that are Japan-only, which are very few and not on the market yet. Every argument against region lock until then is just hot air. Because again, not being region locked didn't do DS or PSP any favors