During my trip to Japan, I couldn't help but notice the sad, pathetic state of affairs concerning the Microsoft XBOX 360. There are loads of Western games, as expected, available on the console. But surprisingly, there are also a fair amount of Japanese exclusives. A few PS2 RPG ports, shooters such as Raiden Collection, action games like Guilty Gear 2 Overture and Oneechanbara X, and upcoming titles such as Battle Fantasia and Otomedius G.
The sad thing? Not a single one of these titles will play on an NTSC/UC 360. This is due to an optional (I repeat, OPTIONAL) region lock Microsoft put in place - and left it up to developers whether or not they wished to utilize it to keep their games playable only on their home turf. This region lock is two hex digits burned to a specific data area on each DVD9, telling the XBOX 360 which region the disc belongs to, and whether or not it should be allowed to play.
Now, I can understand Western developers wanting to region-lock their titles due to a possible impact in sales in home territory if a game is released overseas first. But given the XBOX 360's limited installed base in Japan (500,000 as of April 2008), it doesn't make sense for Japanese developers to lock American and European gamers out. Even more interesting is that this trend is REVERSED. Looking at sites like Play Asia, it's plain as day just how many games coming from the US do not contain region locking (spoiler: almost all games are region free) - yet all games coming out of Japan have region locks in place. W T F. Logically, it would make more sense for the Japanese games to be region free, since it would be sales for the developer and publisher from markets where the games may not be released for financial reasons. By locking out US and EU gamers, these publishers and developers are limiting their possible sales to the 500,000 units in Japan, rather than the 20 million worldwide. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me - most of the time.
Don't get me wrong - in certain cases, region locking makes sense for the publisher. For example: Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey both experienced slight delays in the US due to marketing issues. The Asian version of these games shipped a few months prior to the US release with an English translation on the discs. Due to the expense Microsoft incurred to develop these titles as exclusives, it would make sense that they wouldn't want to have sales numbers skewed in the US by overzealous importers. In cases like this, region locking makes sense. I'm not saying I LIKE it - in fact, I would have much rather had my Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey a few months early - but since sales of imports don't count domestically, it can be a serious issue for business negotiations between console manufacturers and developers. This is especially the case for "niche" titles (like the fighting and RPG genres), where big sales numbers in a region with a large install base could in theory be used to secure more exclusives from developers in a region where the install base isn't quite as high (Japan, in this case). Add to this the fact that RPG fans are fairly import-savvy to begin with, and Microsoft could have had a serious problem on their hands without region locking. There are also issues with games containing licensed content, such as Rock Band (one of the few American 360 titles known to have a region lock) - just because a song is licensed in one region doesn't mean a different set of rights applies overseas.
I'm still holding out a small fragment of hope that a third party will crack the code and come up with some sort of XBOX 360 freeloader, allowing imports to be played on US consoles freely... however, that would introduce a whole NEW set of issues. When you sign up for XBOX Live, you have to agree to an EULA which basically says M$ can delete your account or ban you from the service for whatever reason it sees fit (this very same clause was invoked when a HALO 3 'closed beta' was found on a console not signed up for participating - those poor guys got their XBOXes permanently banned from Live). So would M$ decide to ban all US/EU accounts shown to have played Japanese games/unlocked Japanese achievements? Sadly, I wouldn't put it past them. This is probably the very same reason that a freeloader has yet to be developed. Getting hit with a class action lawsuit for mass bannings from Live is probably not something Datel would want to deal with...
This whole issue is a real shame. I'd love to take my Battle Fantasia with achievement points, and I'd love to be playing Otomedius G later this year on my US console (as I thoroughly enjoyed the arcade version while in Japan), but Japanese publishers seem intent on not letting this happen. As such, I'll be ordering a PS3 version of Battle Fantasia and hope for a port of Otomedius G sometime in the future.
The sad thing? Not a single one of these titles will play on an NTSC/UC 360. This is due to an optional (I repeat, OPTIONAL) region lock Microsoft put in place - and left it up to developers whether or not they wished to utilize it to keep their games playable only on their home turf. This region lock is two hex digits burned to a specific data area on each DVD9, telling the XBOX 360 which region the disc belongs to, and whether or not it should be allowed to play.
Now, I can understand Western developers wanting to region-lock their titles due to a possible impact in sales in home territory if a game is released overseas first. But given the XBOX 360's limited installed base in Japan (500,000 as of April 2008), it doesn't make sense for Japanese developers to lock American and European gamers out. Even more interesting is that this trend is REVERSED. Looking at sites like Play Asia, it's plain as day just how many games coming from the US do not contain region locking (spoiler: almost all games are region free) - yet all games coming out of Japan have region locks in place. W T F. Logically, it would make more sense for the Japanese games to be region free, since it would be sales for the developer and publisher from markets where the games may not be released for financial reasons. By locking out US and EU gamers, these publishers and developers are limiting their possible sales to the 500,000 units in Japan, rather than the 20 million worldwide. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me - most of the time.
Don't get me wrong - in certain cases, region locking makes sense for the publisher. For example: Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey both experienced slight delays in the US due to marketing issues. The Asian version of these games shipped a few months prior to the US release with an English translation on the discs. Due to the expense Microsoft incurred to develop these titles as exclusives, it would make sense that they wouldn't want to have sales numbers skewed in the US by overzealous importers. In cases like this, region locking makes sense. I'm not saying I LIKE it - in fact, I would have much rather had my Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey a few months early - but since sales of imports don't count domestically, it can be a serious issue for business negotiations between console manufacturers and developers. This is especially the case for "niche" titles (like the fighting and RPG genres), where big sales numbers in a region with a large install base could in theory be used to secure more exclusives from developers in a region where the install base isn't quite as high (Japan, in this case). Add to this the fact that RPG fans are fairly import-savvy to begin with, and Microsoft could have had a serious problem on their hands without region locking. There are also issues with games containing licensed content, such as Rock Band (one of the few American 360 titles known to have a region lock) - just because a song is licensed in one region doesn't mean a different set of rights applies overseas.
I'm still holding out a small fragment of hope that a third party will crack the code and come up with some sort of XBOX 360 freeloader, allowing imports to be played on US consoles freely... however, that would introduce a whole NEW set of issues. When you sign up for XBOX Live, you have to agree to an EULA which basically says M$ can delete your account or ban you from the service for whatever reason it sees fit (this very same clause was invoked when a HALO 3 'closed beta' was found on a console not signed up for participating - those poor guys got their XBOXes permanently banned from Live). So would M$ decide to ban all US/EU accounts shown to have played Japanese games/unlocked Japanese achievements? Sadly, I wouldn't put it past them. This is probably the very same reason that a freeloader has yet to be developed. Getting hit with a class action lawsuit for mass bannings from Live is probably not something Datel would want to deal with...
This whole issue is a real shame. I'd love to take my Battle Fantasia with achievement points, and I'd love to be playing Otomedius G later this year on my US console (as I thoroughly enjoyed the arcade version while in Japan), but Japanese publishers seem intent on not letting this happen. As such, I'll be ordering a PS3 version of Battle Fantasia and hope for a port of Otomedius G sometime in the future.
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