Will FFXIV be region locked on PS3?

I need to throw out a correction to the common conception that region locking does not exist on the PS3.

Indeed, physical discs are not region-locked, but DLC is. I have two examples from my own Australian playing experience.

I imported a copy of Assassin's Creed 2 from the United States. When I downloaded the extra chapters from the Australian Playstation Store, they installed to a file for the PAL version of the game. My US disk would not play the Australian DLC. Wasted money.

I own an Australian (PAL) copy of Dragon Age: Origins. I imported a US copy of the Awakenings expansion. It refused to install correctly, because it was looking for an NA installation for Origins. More wasted money.

If you have played around with imports, you may be aware that you can install a game on your system twice and collect the trophies for the game twice, because the PS3 treats PAL and NTSC copies of the same title as completely separate games. It's probably a coding thing.


The conclusion I draw from this is that if you import a version of the game that is not home to your region (NTSC vs PAL) then the game will install correctly initially, but you may experience difficulties downloading patches.

So it's a valid question.

To be safe, import from a region that shares your own FPS coding. eg: Australians should import from Europe, not Japan or the USA.

DLC aren't all locked. I got JP DLCs on my EU console. Again it's only the editor choice to lock or not the content, any content (DLC, downloaded game, physical games, or even demos). All consoles are region coded. Then the editor can choose to lock something or not.