I'm a professional game localizer
Worked on a few small projects such as Max Payne 3, World of Warcraft, Starcraft II and Diablo III plus a billion mobile games
Guess what, regional locking has zero influence in our trade
We get far more work from platforms that were never (and will never be) locked like PC and Smartphones than consoles.
And in the console space, if your game is not localized already (i.e. all in japanese), then the lost sales are negligible, only a tiny amount of people are able to play the game anyway. If it includes English even in the JP release, then, well, someone already got paid.
This whole localization thing is just lame excuses. And I speak as someone who makes a living from it.
Just bought a 2D, I miss Mario Kart on the train and didn't want to spend the money of a 3DS. Good trade off I think, for not being able to fold... I never play in 3D.
And in the console space, if your game is not localized already (i.e. all in japanese), then the lost sales are negligible, only a tiny amount of people are able to play the game anyway.
You're saying region locks affect very few people?
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited October 2015
My assumption was that it was a legal thing - where different countries do not allow certain imagery in their game localizations (Germany I know is especially bad about this, especially anything in any way relating to Nazis. But even America has ESRB things like nudity that may be OK in Japan)
My assumption was that it was a legal thing - where different countries do not allow certain imagery in their game localizations (Germany I know is especially bad about this, especially anything in any way relating to Nazis)
There's also how it allows regional arms of the company to fill gaps in a release list, which just happened with Yoshi's Wooly World, available for months now outside of the US and we only just now got it. Again, gives a better picture of sales within a region, instead of "oh those Americans seem to hate Yoshi games, but Europe eats them up."
Coinciding with that, giving those regions ample time to market the game in whatever manner they feel is appropriate before their public is exposed to it, which has become less and less important over the years as games media has become so global.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited October 2015
You don't need a region lock for that tho. Anyone crazy enough to import doesn't need to be marketed to. They have already decided to buy the game. Most are not going to import so this doesn't really affect anything. And the majority of importing would be for games that aren't localized, so no need to market those
Of course i'm being facetious with "fuck you that's why". But you can bet all your Nintendo products it's got nothing to do with Nintendo worrying about poor localization companies.
It's about control, of course. Nintendo has a very long story of being a huge control freak, as you can see for yourself in one of the 3 books and myriad of articles I've read about their history (and by being alive too). They had this completely uncharacteristically generous gesture of making the DS region free, but went back with the DSI, for absolutely no one's benefit.
And warlock's got it right too. Crazy-ass core uber gamers like us are way too few to be able to skew marketing data at all. Of course, our bitching and moaning on the internet, OTOH, is probably a bit (not hugely) more relevant.
You don't really need to scramble to find justification for every single decision Nintendo ever made. As much as I love their games (not so much their systems since the GCN), they've made a fuckton of mistakes too. Obviously, far less than Sega (ew), but still.
You don't really need to scramble to find justification for every single decision Nintendo ever made. As much as I love their games (not so much their systems since the GCN), they've made a fuckton of mistakes too. Obviously, far less than Sega (ew), but still.
I wouldn't say it was justification for every single Nintendo decision - I think it was more they were playing devil's advocate for why "because fuck you is why" might not be a full view of the reasons behind region locking. Now, I'll be the first to say at the very least I feel portables should be free of region locking but I do understand there are some legit business reasons behind it.
Hell, I don't consider myself a crazy uber gamer, but even I've got a few imports for the DS.
I consider myself much more knowledgeable about this stuff than your typical person and I have 0 imports. people don't even know imports exist.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
All this will be irrelevant in our pure-digital future where I doubt even Sony is going to open up their other-region online shops for purchasing. I suppose there may be physical download/install disks, and maybe those are not region locked, but I am guessing it'll be harder as we move towards this.
the only game I ever actually imported was the first Trauma center, and I imported that from the UK. Game was damned near impossible to find here in it's heyday.
I have a copy of quenden that is an import but I bought it at a convention.
oh shit I do have an import, but it's also from the UK so I didn't even think about it. it was out in the US too, the uk version was just a lot cheaper
I almost never import (though the orignal Japanese release of Jet Set Radio used to be my preferred version), but I do think region locks are a huge pain in the ass, and they don't seem like there are any good reasons for them. The overwhelming majority of gamers are never gonna buy outside of their region anyway. I think even the ones that do import usually wait a bit in hopes that a proper localization will be done, and import as a last resort.
The underlying reason for the region lock was DSiWare. Because there were no user accounts, the only way Nintendo knew how to separate the regions' DSiWare stores from each other was to put in region locking that also locked you to a specific storefront. That's why DS games weren't and still aren't affected while DSi and newer games are. Once Nintendo puts the hardware owning games concept to bed and fully moves everything to the user account, they could roll back the region locking. I don't see them taking the time to do that on the 3DS though when the NX is likely going to supplant it within a few years.
I still want to play Captain Rainbow, although nowadays I have the means to do it (Homebrew Channel and able to understand Japanese), I just haven't gotten around to buying the game.
BTW, I found another exploit and promptly installed IronHax. I'm not turning wireless communications on until I beat ALBW. That way I won't have to worry about Nintendo forcing me to update and being unable to play my Japanese game.
I do have to give credit to Nintendo, at least games like Pokémon and Bravely Default allow you to play in other languages, which is why I didn't mind that much a few years ago. I wish they did the same with Zelda, that's all.
oh shit I do have an import, but it's also from the UK so I didn't even think about it. it was out in the US too, the uk version was just a lot cheaper
This type of import is one of the big reasons companies like region locking.
A lot of the really excellent Steam deals come from buying region-free codes from Russian or South American websites. IIRC, one of the big retailers started blocking out-of-country IP addresses recently.
I'm also told that it's why so much anime has absurd prices ($300 for a single season?! Wat?); Japanese customers were just importing the cheap US versions of shows.
All this will be irrelevant in our pure-digital future where I doubt even Sony is going to open up their other-region online shops for purchasing. I suppose there may be physical download/install disks, and maybe those are not region locked, but I am guessing it'll be harder as we move towards this.
But... Sony and Microsoft already do. You can have multiple accounts on one console tied to different regions around the world. you can easily have a USA account, a UK account, a Japan account, and a Hong Kong account on one console and purchace stuff freely from any of them.
Timely reminder that this "pure-digital future" is still a load of horseshit that will not come to pass anytime soon because infrastructure is nowhere near where it needs to be, and ISPs will actively oppose such a future because of the 'strain' it'll put on their shoestring networks. (See all the fights with Comcast, Netflix, et al)
It just isn't there. It's not going to be there soon.
Timely reminder that this "pure-digital future" is still a load of horseshit that will not come to pass anytime soon because infrastructure is nowhere near where it needs to be, and ISPs will actively oppose such a future because of the strain it'll put on their shoestring networks. (See all the fights with Comcast, Netflix, et al)
It just isn't there. It's not going to be there soon.
What? The absolute largest 3DS game size is something like 3.5 GB, and the average is less than a GB. (Source). This is totally reasonable on pretty much everything but dial-up and metered cellphone connections.
Sure, the US infrastructure for streaming is kinda bad, but that's largely because of latency, not throughput.
So I've have my New 3DS XL (ye gods what a cumbersome name) for a few days now and I must say I love it! It's leaps and bound my favorite handheld I've ever used or owned. The big screens make a heck of a difference, even if they make old DS games look a bit funky sometimes. I can even tolerate the 3D for a few minutes! (I think it's my brain... it just doesn't like 3D stuff.)
Right now I am playing Luigi's Mansion 2. Definitely a game I missed playing.
So I've have my New 3DS XL (ye gods what a cumbersome name) for a few days now and I must say I love it! It's leaps and bound my favorite handheld I've ever used or owned. The big screens make a heck of a difference, even if they make old DS games look a bit funky sometimes. I can even tolerate the 3D for a few minutes! (I think it's my brain... it just doesn't like 3D stuff.)
Right now I am playing Luigi's Mansion 2. Definitely a game I missed playing.
you can hold start or select when starting DS games to make them run on native resolution, without any scaling. There will be some black space around the image (but not close to the hinge), but it looks a lot sharper and nicer.
EDIT:
Here, found a good screenshot:
For this unscaled mode, the XL is actually better than the regular 3DS (dunno about the New 3DS) because the pixels in the 3DS are much smaller than in the DS, so the unscaled mode gets way too small.
I wouldn't assume he was talking strictly about the 3DS. On other platforms we're regularly seeing 40-60 gig games and 10-20 gig patches for them.
Sure, but this is the 3DS thread. If we're talking about all platforms, it's already here on PC, ISP throughput limits notwithstanding; there are no new releases that are only available on physical media (with the possible exception of high end simulators).
In fact, it's getting increasingly difficult to find PC physical media for anything less than big AAA games. Also, disks from traditional 100-in-one junkware publishers. The PC game sections at brick & mortar stores near me are way smaller than they were a decade ago.
I want it to make Level-5 lots and lots of money so they have plenty to fund all the labors of love that they might want to do.
Like, if they could use Yo-kai Watch money to fund a Dark Cloud revival or something~!.
Or maybe they could make Fantasy Life 2.
Isn't it a phone game?
I don't know what you're talking about, there is no Fantasy Life 2 being made yet.
Also Snack World smacks too much of microtransactions for me to even think about. I mean they made a point of showing the hero pulling out a strong weapon he got from purchasing booster packs which isn't on the nose so much as breaking it with a fist.
From looking at backloggery, I have ~125 imported games out of ~800 total. Mostly Japanese, some from PAL-land like Another Code R and Siren: Blood Curse / Arcana Heart 3 so I could get physical versions.
Weirdly, I find region locking more annoying this generation than in previous generations. Last generation, there were a TON of fantastic games that never got localized, but the region locked consoles were the Wii, which was trivial to circumvent, and the 360, where there were so many great 360 games that never got localized that the cost of a Japanese 360 wasn't THAT much of a sting.
This generation, only the WiiU and 3DS are region-locked, and there aren't that many Japan-exclusive games, so buying a Japanese console to play those one or two games feels like a real waste.
Localization really is incredible this generation compared to previous, though. I've only felt the need to import two games, and I wouldn't have needed to do either if I'd been patient.
(Oneechanbara Z2 Chaos, which got an out-of-nowhere localization with soundtrack & bonus goodies and DoA5 LR where I imported + bought the season pass because I was sure we wouldn't get all the same costume DLC in the US)
I want it to make Level-5 lots and lots of money so they have plenty to fund all the labors of love that they might want to do.
Like, if they could use Yo-kai Watch money to fund a Dark Cloud revival or something~!.
Or maybe they could make Fantasy Life 2.
Isn't it a phone game?
I don't know what you're talking about, there is no Fantasy Life 2 being made yet.
Also Snack World smacks too much of microtransactions for me to even think about. I mean they made a point of showing the hero pulling out a strong weapon he got from purchasing booster packs which isn't on the nose so much as breaking it with a fist.
Return to PopoloCrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale looks like it might scratch the same sort of itch as Fantasy Life. It's a Harvest Moon game with traditional JRPG combat, but I get a very similar vibe from all the stuff about it I've seen.
I want it to make Level-5 lots and lots of money so they have plenty to fund all the labors of love that they might want to do.
Like, if they could use Yo-kai Watch money to fund a Dark Cloud revival or something~!.
Or maybe they could make Fantasy Life 2.
Isn't it a phone game?
I don't know what you're talking about, there is no Fantasy Life 2 being made yet.
Also Snack World smacks too much of microtransactions for me to even think about. I mean they made a point of showing the hero pulling out a strong weapon he got from purchasing booster packs which isn't on the nose so much as breaking it with a fist.
Return to PopoloCrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale looks like it might scratch the same sort of itch as Fantasy Life. It's a Harvest Moon game with traditional JRPG combat, but I get a very similar vibe from all the stuff about it I've seen.
Does it still have all of the traditional hassles associated with a Harvest Moon game? I want none of that sort of thing myself, just RPGish grindiness.
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Worked on a few small projects such as Max Payne 3, World of Warcraft, Starcraft II and Diablo III plus a billion mobile games
Guess what, regional locking has zero influence in our trade
We get far more work from platforms that were never (and will never be) locked like PC and Smartphones than consoles.
And in the console space, if your game is not localized already (i.e. all in japanese), then the lost sales are negligible, only a tiny amount of people are able to play the game anyway. If it includes English even in the JP release, then, well, someone already got paid.
This whole localization thing is just lame excuses. And I speak as someone who makes a living from it.
You're saying region locks affect very few people?
I don't see an alternate explanation being offered other than "oh it's a fuck you," which is simply laughable.
There's also how it allows regional arms of the company to fill gaps in a release list, which just happened with Yoshi's Wooly World, available for months now outside of the US and we only just now got it. Again, gives a better picture of sales within a region, instead of "oh those Americans seem to hate Yoshi games, but Europe eats them up."
Coinciding with that, giving those regions ample time to market the game in whatever manner they feel is appropriate before their public is exposed to it, which has become less and less important over the years as games media has become so global.
It's about control, of course. Nintendo has a very long story of being a huge control freak, as you can see for yourself in one of the 3 books and myriad of articles I've read about their history (and by being alive too). They had this completely uncharacteristically generous gesture of making the DS region free, but went back with the DSI, for absolutely no one's benefit.
And warlock's got it right too. Crazy-ass core uber gamers like us are way too few to be able to skew marketing data at all. Of course, our bitching and moaning on the internet, OTOH, is probably a bit (not hugely) more relevant.
You don't really need to scramble to find justification for every single decision Nintendo ever made. As much as I love their games (not so much their systems since the GCN), they've made a fuckton of mistakes too. Obviously, far less than Sega (ew), but still.
Hell, I don't consider myself a crazy uber gamer, but even I've got a few imports for the DS.
I have a copy of quenden that is an import but I bought it at a convention.
BTW, I found another exploit and promptly installed IronHax. I'm not turning wireless communications on until I beat ALBW. That way I won't have to worry about Nintendo forcing me to update and being unable to play my Japanese game.
I do have to give credit to Nintendo, at least games like Pokémon and Bravely Default allow you to play in other languages, which is why I didn't mind that much a few years ago. I wish they did the same with Zelda, that's all.
This type of import is one of the big reasons companies like region locking.
A lot of the really excellent Steam deals come from buying region-free codes from Russian or South American websites. IIRC, one of the big retailers started blocking out-of-country IP addresses recently.
I'm also told that it's why so much anime has absurd prices ($300 for a single season?! Wat?); Japanese customers were just importing the cheap US versions of shows.
But... Sony and Microsoft already do. You can have multiple accounts on one console tied to different regions around the world. you can easily have a USA account, a UK account, a Japan account, and a Hong Kong account on one console and purchace stuff freely from any of them.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
It just isn't there. It's not going to be there soon.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
What? The absolute largest 3DS game size is something like 3.5 GB, and the average is less than a GB. (Source). This is totally reasonable on pretty much everything but dial-up and metered cellphone connections.
Sure, the US infrastructure for streaming is kinda bad, but that's largely because of latency, not throughput.
Right now I am playing Luigi's Mansion 2. Definitely a game I missed playing.
They're smart to put the TV Show on Disney XD.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
you can hold start or select when starting DS games to make them run on native resolution, without any scaling. There will be some black space around the image (but not close to the hinge), but it looks a lot sharper and nicer.
EDIT:
Here, found a good screenshot:
For this unscaled mode, the XL is actually better than the regular 3DS (dunno about the New 3DS) because the pixels in the 3DS are much smaller than in the DS, so the unscaled mode gets way too small.
Nintendo seems to be pushing the hell out of it, so I'd say it's got a good shot.
Like, if they could use Yo-kai Watch money to fund a Dark Cloud revival or something~!.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Sure, but this is the 3DS thread. If we're talking about all platforms, it's already here on PC, ISP throughput limits notwithstanding; there are no new releases that are only available on physical media (with the possible exception of high end simulators).
In fact, it's getting increasingly difficult to find PC physical media for anything less than big AAA games. Also, disks from traditional 100-in-one junkware publishers. The PC game sections at brick & mortar stores near me are way smaller than they were a decade ago.
Or maybe they could make Fantasy Life 2.
Isn't it a phone game?
Or maybe they could make Fantasy Life 2.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I don't know what you're talking about, there is no Fantasy Life 2 being made yet.
Also Snack World smacks too much of microtransactions for me to even think about. I mean they made a point of showing the hero pulling out a strong weapon he got from purchasing booster packs which isn't on the nose so much as breaking it with a fist.
Weirdly, I find region locking more annoying this generation than in previous generations. Last generation, there were a TON of fantastic games that never got localized, but the region locked consoles were the Wii, which was trivial to circumvent, and the 360, where there were so many great 360 games that never got localized that the cost of a Japanese 360 wasn't THAT much of a sting.
This generation, only the WiiU and 3DS are region-locked, and there aren't that many Japan-exclusive games, so buying a Japanese console to play those one or two games feels like a real waste.
Localization really is incredible this generation compared to previous, though. I've only felt the need to import two games, and I wouldn't have needed to do either if I'd been patient.
Yeah... from what we've seen so far, "Fantasy Life 2" is literally Fantasy Life with a layer of microtransactions and a town building mini game.
Return to PopoloCrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale looks like it might scratch the same sort of itch as Fantasy Life. It's a Harvest Moon game with traditional JRPG combat, but I get a very similar vibe from all the stuff about it I've seen.
Does it still have all of the traditional hassles associated with a Harvest Moon game? I want none of that sort of thing myself, just RPGish grindiness.
If I do get it, probably will go digital anyway.
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