PS3 Is Region-Free

[NovaXpress]

This news tidbit is all over the place today. Finally we can play Japanese products with out-of-the-box impunity.

 

The video game sites, being piss-poor at journalism, are able to recognize that Blu-Ray will still have region codes but forget to mention that US and Japan have the same Blu-Ray region. So all games and video discs will be compatible for our two countries at least. About damn time too.

Edited March 23, 2006 by NovaXpress

[chrisbid]

this is the first good news ive heard about the ps3

[msaeger]

Sounds like a smart idea then they don't have to make more than one and they can easily shift inventory around if it's not selling in a certain region.

[moycon]

Now if only there was a way to translate videogames like you can web pages.

How cool would it be to play a foreign RPG that was never released in the US.

[sega saturn x]

Does this count for all playstation games or just upcomming ps3 ones? At any rate it's still fantastic news.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Now if only there was a way to translate videogames like you can web pages.

How cool would it be to play a foreign RPG that was never released in the US.

No thanks. Not with the way that Japanese gets translated into English by any automated translation.

 

But this is an especially good turnaround for Sony, since the original PS1 required that you break the genuine disc protection before you could play out-of-region games. It was hard work for people to make region chips that wouldn't play CD-Rs.

 

That was just such a bonehead maneuver in comparison to Nintendo, who used physical lockouts (different cartridge ports and notches in cart shells), and Sega, who mostly used software lockouts (just rewire the machine to change regions).