One of the most bewildering decisions by Nintendo regarding its DSi console was the decision to enable region locking on the system.
After all, the Nintendo DS allowed gamers all over the world to explore niche oddities from other territories, rather than being locked down to play games from their specific region.
Nintendo’s David Yarnton attempted to explain the unwelcome decision to The Times, where he squarely placed the blame on the different game ratings used through the world.
There are many different age requirements with games around the world. I’ve been involved with the industry body, and we’ve just had the Byron review, so it’s quite topical. As an industry, we are trying to take a responsible stance in that area, to make sure that we have people aware of what content they get, and that there is a certain amount of protection.
– Nintendo UK general manager David Yarnton
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region locking is just a way of making money by limiting certain kinds of competition. the publishing industry has done this for years and until Amazon came along, i had to pay a lot more for books in Australia than my US colleagues.
Online commerce has done a lot to flatten prices across the world with the only difference being shipping costs. now companies like apple and nintendo are making a grab for more money by creating artificial barriers to trade. the idea is to charge in each market, what that market can bear.
if this was just part of parental controls due to different classifications in different countries, parents would just be asked to chose a country when they were setting it up.
shame on you nintendo.
Just bought a Nintendo DSi game in US and its not working on the console that I bought in DK. Weird. How was I suppose to know about this weird Region Locking feature before I bought the game and tried to search for the problem.