The words “region locked” are often bad for game collectors or people
who import games not available in their area. As someone who has
imported games since childhood, seeing those words meant that I could
not sample the wide array of games available for my consoles. A fair
number of games were region-specific, mostly confined to the following
regions: NTSC-U/C (USA and Canada), NTSC-J (Japan/Korea, rest of Asia),
or PAL (Europe/Australia). The “region locked” thing also applies to
movies as well. To solve the region lockout issue, one often had to use
workarounds that involved either software, hardware (adding a special
chip or removing the region lockout chip from your console’s hardware)
or even both. I chose to add the special chip, and although it was
expensive, it was well worth it, as you could now access the full
library of games available for your console.
Nintendo announced that its upcoming system, the Wii U, will be region locked.
Although this is no surprise as Nintendo has region locked all of its
consoles dating back to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES),
software and hardware workarounds have always been available to bypass
Nintendo’s region lockout technology. “What can be played on the Wii U
is restricted by a region-lock feature; software not sold in the same
region cannot be played,” Nintendo confirmed to Japanese gaming
publication Famitsu.
By comparison, one of Nintendo’s competitors, Sony, has generally
made their games region-free, which means you can play any game on any
console. Microsoft has a similar policy to Nintendo’s when it comes to region lockout, but it is not as rigorous.
Source: gadgetsmagazine
