In a more than welcome move the European Commission has said that it wants to remove regional limits on digital goods. The new strategy is titled the Digital Single Market and in essence it would allow you to watch US Netflix from the United Kingdom. It would also hopefully eventually remove region locking from consoles which has been a sore point for many gamers who want to play games from other regions, but are unable too.
Think regional locks on movie streaming and other digital goods are silly? So does the European Commission. It’s outlining a new strategy (the Digital Single Market) that would prevent companies from geo-blocking online services when it’s not truly necessary. This kind of arbitrary limit “cannot exist” in a single European Union-wide digital marketplace, officials argue.
It’s not clear what rules will be involved (you’ll likely hear more about that when the full strategy is due in May), but the implication is that you wouldn’t be forced to download or stream from a country-specific service. If you wanted to watch French Netflix from Germany, for example, you could.
Good idea. I want to see Latin American stuff :v
Well that would be one way to end region locking. I don’t live in Europe but I hope this goes through and goes even further to force Nintendo to end their console region lock bs.
From the quoted text in the article, I don’t really see how this would a) affect Europeans being able to watch US TV, and b) region-locking in games.
It’s saying that there shouldn’t be locks within the European Union. Has nothing to do with world-wide.
I got the same idea.
This could be the start of something great. Of course Nintendo doesn’t have to go along with this and probably won’t, but maybe the investors will push it onto them like they did mobile gaming. Region locking sucks, especially for those in some of the smaller European countries. But if region locking is removed I’m sure Nintendo will lose more money then make it. Sure a lot of people will probably stop pirating games, but a lot of gamers will start buying their games from cheaper countries too. Still I hope to see the day when Nintendo drops region locking and a lot of their other strict practices.
There’s no such a thing as region locking in modern Nintendo consoles. They just block it with firmware. It can easily be removed if they wanted to.
Investors would never push to remove region locking. It benefits them unfortunately..
But who’s gonna fork out money to fly to another country Just to save money on buying a game?
And if I’m completely off the mark, how about this: there is technology that can pinpoint your location so that you can’t say ‘Oh, I’m from This country’ when you make a new account or whatever.
And if I’m still off, well…I’m just a guy. Lol
You could import the games from cheaper countries. As far as buying games digitally, while Nintendo could implement a program that recognizes your location so that you could only but games from a certain eshop, I’m sure you could find a way to get around that somehow. Even now the 3DS nor Wii U can tell your exact location which is how some people avoid paying taxes on games. Hopefully if all systems/games were universal they would also be equal in prices. :)
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The real sasori is illiterate, plus there aren’t that many people here that use ellipses points. You’re slipping up ‘buddy.’
What does this have to do with the article at all?
Heck yeah! Abolish region locking!
“in essence it would allow you to watch US Netflix from the United Kingdom.”
No. In essence, it would allow you to watch Netflix of any region, like the US Netflix, from Europe (or maybe only countries that are part of the EU). The UK is not the only part of Europe, nor the only member of the EU.
Sorry kid but UK is a part of Europe.
Sorry “kid” but you need to read more carefully. Nobody said the UK wasn’t part of Europe.
The UK was used as an example….
I do believe this is not going to happen worldwide. This is an idea to regulate media broadcasting within Europe.
YES let’s get some eqeul prices finally
Sure, let’s also get equal minum wages for everyone. Let’s all get $9 an hour for everyone too :D
S/
great news but kets be realistic
netflix etc yes benefits everyone
console locks effects like 0000000001% of gamers
Thank fucking goodness. But it should be removed everywhere. Youtube does the same thing.
Nintendo, take notice. Now may be a good time to end region locking especially after reading this news.
Now if they could just do this for digital and physical releases of every form of media in existence… The only reason region locking should ever exist for anything is to block products that would be illegal to view in specific countries. That’s it.
And then Nintendo would finally remove the Region Lock from their consoles and everybody would live happily ever after!
Ah, the paradise…
You should read the article properly
The european comission is strictly speaking about online services, i.e. geo blocking (based on IP, not a region code), so no dice regarding region locks on console games.
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