Will FFXIV be region locked on PS3?

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Originally Posted by Malakhim

Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure region-locking was part of the plan to make sure China was flyin' solo.

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They don't need to region-lock the game because of china. China players get a own game not linked to SE accounts.

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Originally Posted by Felis

I find the region-lock on DVD needless. First you can make easy a DVD player region-free and second a DVD drive can change the region 5 times. Buy 2 and you have one for NA dvd and one for EU dvd.
Or use your home dvd player for dvd in your region and the dvd drive in the pc for import dvd.

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DVD was born in 1995. At the time it was very uncommon for people to have one reader already, so having 2 was just out of question. Same with importing. Internet wasn't as widely present in our daily life as it is today. So yeah region lock was really effective until ~2000. Then DVD players started to become "standard" on new purchased PCs and it was relatively easy to make a player region free by flashing it.

Then home players became less and less expensive while e-business was booming. Anyone could just import anything and play it at home.

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Originally Posted by Helius

PS3 games aren't region locked (unlike the Wii and XBox 360)

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Actually I'd like to correct everyone stating the 360 is completely region locked: this is not the case at all.

The first batch of games certainly were, but Microsoft's policy is that whoever publishes the game can decide to region lock it. In actuality MOST games aren't region locked at all.

I have an NTSC XBox 360 and play dozens of PAL games on it. I used to have to check online if a game was region free or not but by now every major publisher (Every game by EA, Activision and Capcom at least, excluding the sports games for licensing reasons) are region free now. Basically every game I buy for my 360 now is region free.

Also to answer OPs question, the game MIGHT be region locked. Or rather, not the game itself but the account system. It is already region locked this way on the pc (for example you need an NA account to play the NA version of the game).

I know this because I had an NA account for Alpha/Beta, but then I moved to England and when I purchased the full version here I could not use my NA account, I had to make a new EU one.

So heads up on that.

I would like a dev response to this please, this is actually a very good question to be answered.

It is certainly not the primary reason for region locking, but there is a quite practical reason for region locking. Namely, the physical differences between recorded media in various parts of the world. The NTSC standard calls for 23.9 Hz on "24p" (24 fps progressive), while the PAL standard sets this to 25 Hz even. This requires a hardware (or more recently software) conversion between the two standards. While not really pertinent anymore, the mechanical differences between PAL and NTSC almost certainly contributed to the existence of region locking. For more information

Nothing to do with that. NTSC is the same in Japan and the US, yet you have two regions for games. (NTSC and NTSC-J.)

While for DVDs, Japan is Region 2, Europe is Region 2, and movies/TV have different standards (EU is PAL / JP is NTSC).

It has absolutely nothing to do with technical specs.

All TV supports PAL and NTSC just fine now, we're not in the 90's anymore. It's all about money. Region locking is just a form of DRM.

Hmmm, while true, I would be extremely surprised if the technical differences between PAL and NTSC had absolutely no impact on the original motivation behind region locking. I'm not saying that it is at all pertinent anymore, as you say, we're not in the 90's anymore. But saying that it was always just a blind money grab doesn't seem likely given that there was a reasonably valid excuse for it.

Simple enough to figure out I suppose, has NTSC and NTSC-J always existed, or was it originally just NTCS and PAL and sub-regions were added shortly after? If it's the former, I'll agree it never had anything to with technical specs. If the later, most likely they at least had some good intentions (or at least justification).

Only thing ever on the ps3 that is region locked is a recent game, Persona 4: arena, because of "this place has it cheaper! so we are locking it to only that area! we want money!"



Anything else is not region locked

NTSC-J locked games been there since the PlayStation. The NES already had region lock in place as well.

Also, for DVD and Movies/TV, France always had its own system (SECAM) yet never had its own region for DVDs and was assigned to Zone 2, like the rest of Europe and Japan.

It really has nothing to do with technical specs. That was never a motive.

Things that are annoying for customers (us) are 99% of the time put in place for economical reason. Not for practical reasons. Anyway if something is not compatible, it's not compatible. When you tried to play an NTSC VHS on a PAL VCR, you would get a black & white distorted picture.

Same for DVD if your PAL player and/or TV didn't support NTSC. How would region lock change anything? In the end it wouldn't play.

Hmm, so it seems. That's too bad, having dabbled with video editing and cleaning up NTSC video (removing 2:3 pulldown frames is quite the pain), I had always assumed that the convenience of not having to deal with video conversion was one of the reasons for region locking.

Having done a little more research myself between posts, it does look like NTSC and NTSC-J also have small technical differences, but they are all on the transmission side (interpretation of True Black, for instance).