In the Brave New World of televisions you talk to and devices that watch you while you sleep, we somehow still have a need for region locking. A Microsoft rep confirmed to Digital Trends that, yes, the Xbox One will be region locked and, yes, that region locking will look similar to the method used on the Xbox 360.
“Similar to the movie and music industry, games must meet country-specific regulatory guidelines before they are cleared for sale,” said the Microsoft representative. “We will continue to work with our partners to follow these guidelines with Xbox One.”
Much like Blu-rays, region locking is limited to the publishers and distributors who demand them. But still, it’s a little disappointing that such an archaic system and way of thinking is being perpetuated by new technology.
Microsoft answers the question of Xbox One region locks [Digital Trends]
Comments
111 responses to “Xbox One Will Be Region Locked”
not buying one
As every game will be offered digitally I’m just going to find a way around this and buy from the US online store.
Except they would still be region locked so it wont work.
the “One” console that keeps on giving,
Bad News.
M$ is attacking all the major console perks. THey are forcing all these “features” this generation and will be hell bent on promoting them through the console lifetime. I doubt the message will change at E3, I hope they bring that fake applause audience into E3 to sit behind everyone.
I predict their E3 showing will be met with some very frosty, steely-eyed stares from lip-pursing journalists not in the mood to soak up more bullshit.
Mark posted an article contemplating Microsoft’s take on the reaction. 40% good, 40% indifferent, 20% negative. But seriously, as more news comes out… Just do a google search for ‘xbox one’. Just on its own, no values judgements, just the name. Check how many articles and links on page one are negative. Especially the first couple links.
If 20% of your google search results are negative, that’s not really a good thing if they’re at the top of the search results and people have to go through another 5-10 pages before they get to the positive feedback. Quality, not quantity Microsoft.
They can go with the “we don’t care because we make more money, and the blind following will make us last” approach.
Which can be very convincing to today’s mass media [we are already seeing Gamestop shares fall, not that I care about Gamestop], because everyone wants to bet on the winning horse.
Guess they should buy a ps4 if they want to win.
To be expected, I guess. Aren’t they all done this way these days? They should consider blocking certain other technologies as well while they’re at it – why not make the system fail to load when a PS4 is connected to the TV? Brilliant.
As I said yesterday, this is a crock of shit. If there were any truth to it then UK 360 games wouldn’t have worked in Australia since they have a different classification system to us, and some games that were banned here weren’t banned there. It is nothing to do with regulatory guidelines and everything to do with being able to charge some people more than others for the same product.
You are right. The gamers market is particularly vulnerable at these console launches. We have to be careful.
Of course it is but that isn’t a convenient excuse
The more that these consoles come out with the detail, the more likely I am going to go out and buy a GeForce Titan, just does not seem to be worth the hassle. With stuff like this, they are going to alienate a whole raft of gamers. If i was still working at game, I could just imagine the uphill battle it would be to secure per-orders with this crap coming out almost daily, something that is a massive push from the Shop staff’s management. I feel for you Shop staff, it must be tough.
Close, it’s got to do with maximizing revenue across the year.
If they can stretch out the release of something in different territories across, say, 6 months, they’ll see steady returns on that product for a longer time.
In this day and age though, region locking is redundant.
But we generally get games within a few days of the US release, not 6 months later. So why not make us part of their region? Because that region’s games are half the price of ours, so they’re going to do all they can to keep squeezing that extra revenue out of us.
Don’t give them ideas. With them essentially going digital they could actually restrict us to AU games at crazy AU prices…
I thought that was the entire point of this Xbone exercise.
Ummmm yeah it will be “region locked” like the xbox360 but it’s up to the publisher whether the game is locked… I think only EA had locked games most of the time
My injustice, Halo and Skyrim as well as several other games are from the US (NTSC) and work perfectly fine on all my Pal consoles same goes obviously for all my UK imports
Sorry buddy, but you’re wrong. Making games on discs has nothing to do with NTSC (or PAL). Those are merely standards of video (TV) signals. It’s merely about globalisation and localisation in in economic markets and how prices would, should or at least could be the same of different around the world.
I don’t think Microsoft (and many of the publishers) like it that I can buy a physical copy of Max Payne 3 twice as cheap overseas (and have it shipped here) then I were to buy it digitally.*
*Oz Gameshop and Steam (Au) were used as references.
It is so much bullshit. PS3 isn’t region-locked, and has what… ONE region-locked game? Why haven’t THEY fallen afoul of all this supposedly important and difficult regional classification? They haven’t. Because it’s a bullshit lie fed to us as an excuse for overcharging.
As MS said themselves in the above quote, “games must meet country-specific regulatory guidelines before they are cleared for sale”. If you buy a game from the US, it’s being sold in the US where it has been cleared for sale. There is no regulatory issue there at all. Whether or not it’s legal to then bring it into Australia is a problem for the buyer to worry about, not Microsoft.
*Goes to put another nail in the XBone coffin.*
Oh man! There is no wood left to nail into!
how is it any different to current xbox360
You’re still able to use it as a gaming machine and not a hyper advanced TiVo!
Seriously, this nonsense with the next generation consoles has made me crazy.
This past week I played a SNES, Mega Drive and now a N64. I do not know what is stranger. The fact I am cycling though the retro consoles or the fact I am getting more fun in half hour sprints with those consoles than two hour sessions on the HD consoles (360 and PS3).
Hmmm how the uninformed bandwagon keeps rolling…
The interesting part is that you played a Snes, Megadrive and N64 – At the end of the Xbone’s life, they will shut down the servers like EA does on a regular basis.. so what happens to the Xbone at that point?… my guess is that once all the servers go down forever, your Xbone (if anyone actually buys it) will become an oversized paper weight that wont play games anymore, let alone do anything else because it has to be online…
You will still be able to play your Snes, Megadrive and N64 though…
surely they can utilise some sort of update or whatever when they shut the servers down to enable people to play offline?
I think the better question is, why isn’t it different to the XBox360?
Exactly. The current Xbox is region locked too but how many publishers decide to utilise the restriction? Hint: nearly none. Not even first party Microsoft Game Studios titles are region locked. When I took my Australian Xbox to America I didn’t hesitate buy any game I wanted and I didn’t find a single one that was region locked.
But hey, don’t let that stop everyone from freaking out that the sky is falling. Continue on band wagon.
I assume you bought the “AAA” titles and whatnot such as ME and the like right?
Unfortunately I import niche jp and jrpgs Which *are* region lockedc 90% of the time. Then again I’m probably just a random blip in the marketing radar *shrugs*
he he…no wood left…
Sigh… I remember when I used to get excited for new consoles.
Agree, the only thing I was thinking when I read this news was “Le sigh”. From an excitement score between -10 and 10, the PS4 is scoring a 1 (Nothing bad, nothing good, +1 point because I’m a Sony enthusiast) while the Xbone is scoring a -2 (Always on-line, region lock, no game sharing with friends, +1 for controller).
XBox One!? Seems more likely they should have called it XBox Fail!
Or better yet, the XBox Lost.
*Obligatory XBone comment*
Sorry, I was poking fun at how One also sounds like Won. As they say on the Internet, epic fail on my behalf.
I quite like the name Xbox One, because there is only one reason to buy it, carrying over gamerscore.
Either that or they only have to make ‘one’ of them and call it day. Purely because no-one is going to want to buy any of them!
Well done M$…well done *golf clap*
Region Locking = pointless. If you want to do something illegal, you aren’t going to be worried by region locking. Region locking only irritates people doing the right thing and buying their media.
They’re not concerned about people doing illegal stuff. They’re concerned about doing legal stuff that they don’t like, such as importing games from other regions where they’re cheaper, lending games to friends or buying used games.
And exactly why it is dumb. Make doing legal stuff easier, we do legal stuff. Make legal stuff hard and not reasonable on price, then things are done……differently.
This is just the icing on the cake. Even if I could get past the inability to share games, I’m done buying region locked devices. I won’t pick up a wii U for the same reason.
Be interesting to see if MS or a third party publisher take it to the next level. Considering each game is registered with a CD Key on purchase, I can imagine them locking the CD Keys to the country of purchase, to be used with country specific hardware and account.
There will be angry mobs with pitchforks and torches if they make UK ozgameshop games not work here.
UK games are PAL.
They said that it’ll work on the lines of the current system, implying that Australia will still be part of Europe.
But… but… that would be downright evil!
Stay near your phone, you may well be getting a job offer from MS soon if you’re coming up with those kinds of ideas.
If the ps4 is region free like the ps3 then this will be another nail in the coffin.
Yeah Sony have had region free now for what, 7 years?
Way to keep up M$
The Xbox 360 is region locked too.
depends what the regions are like. If it’s country orientated or similar to the regions that DVDs had then it’s terrible. If it’s a case of PAL or NTSC then not such bad news. Aussie gamers like to import though seeing as the ridiculous markups we see will most likely continue and if they restrict the options to import, well then, Sony I hope you don’t follow suit.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the One bluray? Then PAL and NTSC is irrelevant.
PS4 hopefully continues its trend from PSP, PS3 and PSV of being region free.
Honest question (as I dont understand the tech) but with Digital TV, HD displays and modern consoles is PAL and NTSC even relevant anymore?
No, it isn’t any more. All display devices today are capable of adapting to the source material.
It hasn’t even really been relevant since the gamecube/ps2/original x-box generation, as even CRTs sold in PAL regions since about 2000 have included NTSC display ability (heck, the last CRTs that we had was compatible with all three major analogue formats, NTSC, PAL and SEACAM).
Heck, a large number of early region 4 and EU region 2 dvds were NTSC encoded, either due to laziness or due to a lack of a PAL source (one of the early Dr who DVDs had this issue, where all they had was a converted NTSC, and converting back would have made it look even worse with the upscaling algorithms that were available back around 2001).
TL:DR
Standards issues have been irrelevant to people in PAL and SEACAM regions for a very long time.
I thought the Americans still liked to be different just because? Either way, there’s still probably some people playing on an old analogue TV somewhere.
So it’s just a case of the publishers wanting to region lock certain products then. I have a feeling that this is just Microsoft putting it in there for the publishers who want to lock their games, but most probably won’t
Largely no, but corporate divisions formed along those lines over recent decades and they haven’t got around to reorganising them. So agreements will be made for a region that’ll include places that have historically been lumped together, not because they _should_ be together.
“similar to 360” means?
The 360 wasn’t region locked, the games were, but this is making it sound like it’ll be region locked like recent Nintendo stuff is (locked to a region so PAL consoles can never (legally) play US games).
But if it is like the 360 then while the majority of US games would be region locked, some would be region free and work on our PAL consoles.
And of course there’s an extreme case where Australia has its own region (so can’t play imported European games), but this seems highly unlikely.
Either way, region locking is shit. But as long as I can still import cheaper stuff from the UK then it’s manageable, but not preferred.
Get out of here with your logic!
Xbone sux ps4some 4eva lolllokololool
The 360 itself actually wasn’t region locked.
However, the game publishers had the option to region lock their games if they wanted to. So you ended up with some games that were region locked and others that weren’t. Bizzarely, even game from the same publisher weren’t consistent…as an example Red Dead Redemption was region free, but Grand Theft Auto 4 was region locked.
This on the other hand sounds like it might be a unified system that takes a page out of Nintendo’s book.
I’d say this was very much expected news. No surprises here.
XBOX ONE? MORE LIKE XBOX NONE LOLOLOLOLOLOL
ok
The main thing that irritates me is the way they continually lie about their reasoning. ‘Region locking is about ratings?’ Yeah… That… ‘By having your console connected to the cloud all the time it can do processing for you!’ Ok… That worked out well last time it was tried. Etc.
So, shopping is becoming global and Microsoft are moving in the opposite direction. That can only be labelled as archaic. I can deal with all the other issues with the XboxOne but taking consumer choice away from me is a big no-no. I’ll reserve my judgement for after E3 but I think this has put the nail in the coffin.
The Xbox 360 was region locked too but virtually no publishers took enforced it.
As an avid 360 gamer I think I’ll be awaiting final confirmation on the actual implementation before I jump to conclusions however if it stops me from grabbing games from the UK at half the price we have them here then I’ll be saving myself a lot of money and not grabbing this one.
But the 360 was region locked and you could still buy PAL games from the uk. I don’t even understand your reasoning.
That is exactly what I’ll be waiting for. Right now they’re saying it’s comparable to the 360 – but that’s no guarantee. They may decide AU/NZ are a separate region and then publishers can still continue to chrge us the Australia tax. I won’t buy a console that that forces me to pay twice what others around the world pay.
The 360 was region locked. How is this news? Why is everyone acting surprised? Find another band wagon to jump on. It seems that since the mass effect 3 uproar everyone now things that if they complain on the internet long enough they’ll get what they want.
If they’re saying it’s like X360, that means that to region or not is left up to the publisher. Many of the 360 publishers (notably IIRC Microsoft themselves & Ubisoft) never regioned their games. Some of them (Namco Bandai the worst of them) would region everything as tightly as possible.
I expect it’ll be the same thing here. Wouldn’t be surprised if the used games bullshit ends up being left up to the publishers too.
This man is using logic, burn him!
I didn’t think this would happen, but I officially hit the “I don’t care about next-gen” level of hype. I guess when I get tired of current-gen, my productivity and family time at home is just gonna go up.
Was about to type the same thing. Big entertainment is demanding more and more concessions from the consumer while claiming its all to provide a better service. D3 and Sim City have exposed this for the con that it is.
Ah! I finally understand why it’s called the Xbox One! Microsoft are living in the past!
So people are complaining about region locking which has been included on just about every console ever made!!!!! The Dreamcast is the only one that i know of didnt have region locking and look how that turned out
The Xbox One is by far the greatest console developed. The Microsoft conference was amazing. I was impressed with everything they had to offer.
I didnt want them to talk about games – its a friggin games console of course if plays games – its a new generation so of course the graphics will be better and impressive – i wanted to know what else it did – how the HDMI input worked.
This is the first and only console that has made me want to buy one day one. I will deff be pre-ordering when the price is announced. People spend $1000 on phones and ipads. I will gladly pay $1000 if it performs the same as per the demonstration.
exactly, dvd players, computers etc… all region locked. if people think this is a problem now they’ve been living under a rock
Are you aware the PS3, PSP, PSVita and NDS were region free?
I’m pretty sure even the Gameboy was region free
Look at how most of those consoles turned out (pretty sure NDS is the BIGGEST SELLING CONSOLE of all time btw….)
If it’s done like xbox 360 then it’s not too bad. We still get good prices when importing from UK.
That said, I’m not feeling any real reasons to purchase this console. Spec-wise it’s the same as PS4, none of the gimmicks are of interest to me and there are some unnecessary obstacles they’ve brought in place. I genuinely hope they fail so they learn a lesson here, but for all I know there are 10’s of millions of kids salivating at this thing.
Hoping all this bad news is “Only on Xbox”.
Everyone hit sony twitter about this too.
I’m currently living and studying in Japan, so this is bad news for me. If Sony come out and confirm region free then my money is locked in for that side of the fence this time around :/
Once it is released get everyone you know to bitch to the ACCC about it, they made DVD players released in australia to have a supplied method to change regions or release them region free, and the courts ruled we could mod ps2s to get around region locking. Australian courts have always came down of the side of fuck region locking.
And the cost of compliance after the fact is a lot more expensive that during development.
So let’s do the anti-consumer round-up:
All game-trading/swapping/loaning will be regulated and monetized. No ‘lending’ system similar to as exists for ebooks. No cheaper prices as a trade-off, as exists on Steam.
Consumer-unfriendly.
Unwanted/useless peripheral (Kinect) is mandatory for use, provides zero benefit to core gamers over a remote and a control pad, increases the overall cost of the unit and will encourage devs to shoehorn its use into unnecessary places. Also, an always-on microphone and camera with internet connectivity, which can identify you by your face and heart-rate. Yeah. No potential for privacy disaster THERE.
Consumer-unfriendly.
Region-locking. Zero consumer benefit whatsoever, covered with a pathetic lie that insults our intelligence.
Consumer-unfriendly.
Mandatory once-daily online-check-in DRM. Zero consumer benefit whatsoever and they didn’t even care enough to try to lie to us about it. They’re just shrugging and taking off their belts, saying, ‘Look. Fucking is going to happen. We can do it the hard way or we can do it the easy way. Either way, bend over.’
Consumer-unfriendly.
What we have here… is a failure to communicate. About a glorified TV remote (which won’t come in under $500) holding a handful of gamer favourite franchises to ransom with the gun of exclusivity, hoping that capitulation to its demands will prove that people like its ideas.
It’s anti-consumer terrorism which we – frustratingly – WILL give in to. And I hate that, and anyone who bows to this kind of corporate strong-arming.
They’re only as powerful as the dollars you give them. If you don’t give them any, they WILL come begging and crawling for it instead. Or they’ll collapse under their own weight and die, and when one of the many scuttling scavengers takes place as king of the hill that is their predecessor’s bloated corpse, we roll the dice on whether they’ll be more benevolent.
Yes, yes, yes!
It’s too much; that game companies are now in a position where they can keep getting more and more anti-consumer and know that they’ll still sell their product at high levels anyway. It shouldn’t be this way. We’re the ones with the money! We’re the ones that can say “Nope, this isn’t cool” and NOT BUY until they change their ways. Their attitude won’t change until our attitude as consumers change; until we stop going “Oh, but I need the next game in series X” and buy it even though we hate the anti-consumer practices that buying it just further encourages. Enough’s enough.
It’s just so… horribly depressing. There are two ways of making money. 1) Create something. People love it, and rush to give you their money. 2) Create something. Manipulate people and markets such that there is an unwillingly captive audience.
I mean, I get it. I do. People love money. I get that.
For the people who create something for fun that enough people LOVE to make it stupidly successful (See: Team Fortress, Minecraft, Portal, Borderlands), home run! Good for them!
But sadly for everyone one of those, there’s many more who are also creating because they love it… but not as many people love what they love, so it makes jack shit money. (See: Any FFA PVP-focused MMOs like Mortal or Darkfall.)
And if you really want money – even more than you want to create things you like – you’re going to hook up with someone (big publishers) whose talent is manipulating people and manipulating economies, and create something that isn’t a labour of love, but which is designed (then refined, through sequels) to be something that appeals to as many people as possible; usually by cheap psychological tricks (skinner box), illusions, and contractual market manipulations (region-locking, platform exclusives).
I just… I really want someone major to go back and say, “What can we do that people really love, that we think is really special and hope everyone will get on board with too?”
Something, anything, instead of, “What have our market research groups tested as the best possible intersection of markets, and how can we implement a rigid and persistent control architecture for that market?”
I wish that could happen. I wish I lived in THAT world. If someone could make me believe we lived in that world, they would have my monies.
EDIT: I wanted Microsoft to come to us and say, “Hey, check out these awesome new ways to game!” instead of saying, “Hey! Swallow these super-inconvenient measures we put in place to protect our revenue!” I wanted a reason to give them my money, not fight against having it wrestled away from me.
So true. It used to be “Hey look, we have a great product! Look at all these features! Please buy it?” Now it’s “We have this product. Brand positioning and inertia (with a hint of hostage related goods, i.e. games) have ensured that you WANT it and you’ll have it. But if you want it you’ll have to swallow all of these features which we included for our sole increased profit (and at your expense). But hey, I’m being too transparently cynical about my contempt for you, sheep. Here’s a doggy in the iteration number 3657468th of your favourite game of killing people! Look at those sweet graphics and forget what I just said like the good little bitch you are.”
Oh crap, Kotaku. Now you’ve done it.
the 360 had region locking, this isnt news.
It’d be nice if we could get some kind of boycott going, corporations have always been out for themselves but I don’t think they’ve ever been this blatantly screwing with customers. Oh well I’m just glad we haven’t spent most of the civilized age fighting for rights- oh shit.
well, i was still unsure about this console, but now i am sure, no matter how good the games are on this console, its still gonna be a fail in my books. They tryed so hard with this console for being anti piracy but now they are just giving a open invitation for piracy to take even a fuller approach to cracking this console.
It’s almost like they made a checklist of things players would hate in a console. Jeez.
What’s next? These also can go RROD for nostalgia’s sake?
More ideas for fucking with customers:
* Shift more features to xbox live gold, and include ads that ‘encourage’ silver live users to switch to gold all the time.
* Extra fees for linking accounts together as a ‘family’ for working in combination with the used game thing. Unrealistically small limits on family sizes (eg: 5 and under) to limit exploitation by circles of friends who are just swapping games.
* Live start page will be the ‘advertisement’ page.
* Adding voice to kinect so that it can respond to you – but only using default satnav american female, with no options to upgrade to customized voices, such as 2001’s HAL or GLaDOS.
* Voice detection which interferes with gameplay as you curse at the screen or if other people DARE to have conversations nearby while you’re playing.
* Direct download offers which bring prices on 5yr old games down to $100 from their $110 RRP.
* No region customization so that awesome US-only features continue to taunt you on the start page.
* Only one controller in the basic kit. No included headset. Because, y’know. Kinect. And obviously everyone in the room wants to hear your fuckwit teammates.
It certainly pushes the One behind the PS4, but hey, what do I care?
I’m PC!
My Sony Blu Ray player is region locked. Lets boycott Sony as well!!!
Here’s some facts for everyone. The current Xbox 360 and PS3 are the same when it comes to regions. The consoles themselves aren’t region locked but the option to lock games to regions is possible for both consoles yet few rarely do. Even Halo, Gears of War every game I’ve bought from America is region free. Mircosoft Game Studios don’t region lock their own games.
So before you cry that the sky is falling remember that you’ve been living with consoles that have this feature for years now.
So the title for this article is false, the console itself is not ‘region locked’ nor is the current gen consoles. It seems like Kotaku wants to focus on fanning the flames of fanboy rage rather than reporting accurately.
If anything the Xbox 360 is above the PS3 cause if you wanna buy DLC for a PS3 game is has to be from the same region the game is from but on Xbox I use my American account to buy cheaper DLC for Australian games and vice versa.
It’s more the straw that broke the camels back, regardless of the way it is currently being used if region locking were to be used to its full potential it’d be a massive pain. So once you add that to the massive torrent of crap that nobody wanted to hear it really stacks up.
@shadow I agree with Green Guy in that it’s partly a case of the straw breaking the camel’s back.
But I think it’s also a case of mixed messaging, or at least… the wrong message.
They try to tell us that they want this to be the one media system to rule them all, they want to win the ‘fight’ for the living room (which smartphones are laughing at and saying, ‘Uh… Dude. why only one room?’), then give us region locking to restrict our options, meaning we have to turn to alternatives anyway.
Their primary goal seems to be the only device you need to have hooked up to your TV, and with region-locking forcing you to use other equipment for playback, they fail in their goal. Hard.
They want us to embrace always-online – while ignoring the fact that the Internet is GLOBAL, trying to prop up these artificial barriers that have no place in modern communication or entetainment. “We’re going to drag you kicking and screaming into a brave new world… except for the parts we don’t like.”
It’s more of the same market manipulation that causes us to get movies weeks after the rest of the world. Games shipped or ported months later, or in the TRULY ABSURD case of online digital, unlocked by flipping a switch days later for reasons which are entirely anti-consumer.
It’s self-serving hypocritical bullshit. I can understand it being anchored to the consoles of damn near a decade ago when the paradigm shift was less clear, but today? Their agenda is clearly to try and STOP us from circumventing their flailing, contrived market-segmentation devices, which is like trying to stop teenagers from having sex. They don’t get it – this is going to happen. They should instead try to deal with it responsibly instead of complaining that Australia has massive piracy rates or that grey importing damages the industry.
Everything about this console reveals (a continuation of) complete fingers-in-ears denial of reality.
Was anything region locked on the PS3 (aside from BRs)? Because Bandai Namco region locked the shit out of their 360 games (especially Japanese-only games), but absolutely did not do that for their PS3 titles, I had a ton of Japan-only PS3 games whose 360 counterparts were region locked (eg Idolmaster).
According to Wikipedia:
The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles are region-locked.
All PlayStation 3 games except for one are region free.[4][5] Even though publishers could choose to region-lock specific games based on a mechanism that allows for the game to query the model of the PS3, none did so during the first six years after the launch of PS3.[6] The first game to be region-locked on PS3 is Persona 4 Arena;[7] publisher Atlus declined to reverse its decision despite substantial outcry by some of their fanbase. The decision was made to avoid excessive importing, due to all versions of the game sharing the same features and language support, but differing release dates in each region. There is region locking for backwards compatible PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, as well as DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies. Additionally, some games separate online players per region, such as Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Online. PlayStation Store only contains content for its own country, for example the EU store will not supply usable map packs for an imported US copy of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. In addition, downloadable content for the PlayStation 3 systems is region locked, so you need to buy DLC from US PlayStation Store to use it in a US game. More specifically, the PS3’s file system includes region-of-origin, so DLC cannot be shared between different region games much like save files cannot.
So it’s the same as the 360, the option is there but it was purely up to the publisher. Like I said, no first party games from MS were locked. But this won’t stop people from flipping out about any possible thing they her about the Xbox one
This may be a little off topic but, there’s nothing out there anymore that excites me, except for Star Citizen which comes out November 2014, and it’s on PC (I don’t own a PC). I think developers are able to make these amazing looking worlds, but gamers rarely get the chance to explore them. Instead we just kill things within them (I still love Halo). I want new experiences and new ways of interacting with the gaming world, but I doubt the new consoles will offer me a way of doing that any time soon. That said, a new Halo game may force me to buy an Xbone. I’d love to do more than shoot things in the Halo universe though.
why do ms continue to talk?
every time they open their mouths lately they piss everyone off. the problem is, all the contradictions with the stories. tomorrow they’ll come out and say it isn’t region locked.
smh
I thought MS job was to make me want an Xbox One? So far I’ve seen basically everything I never wanted in a gaming console……..and more!
I had already decided that I won’t be buying this joke of a console, but I import the vast majority of my games on 360 & PS3, and I save $40 – $55 each time. All DVD and bluray players come with codes to make them region free too.
This Xbone is just getting worse and worse by the day. If they don’t make some serious changes to all of this DRM & region locks, I cant see any smart person going anywhere near the piece if junk, They are literally doing everything people despise! It almost feels like they’re trolling everyone.
Xbone = seemingly worst console EVER!
Did you know your current xbox 360 is region locked too? The thing is, region locking is part of the PS3 and 360 but it’s up to the publishers if they want to region lock games, not Microsoft. As a result, very few publishers bother to region lock current gen games, even Microsoft doesn’t enforce region locking on their first party games.
This article isn’t news, it’s just telling you that the Xbox One will have the same set up as the 360. This article is just meant to cash in on the anti MS bandwagon and get clicks and hype people up.
I’m so tired of this shit.
I wonder if the Xbone will be able to play the Atari version of ET. Would be a bonus because you will find them in the same landfill.
Oh did you know that only ONE PS3 game has been region locked in the whole time its been out? Besides, how does the 360/PS3/WiiU being region locked justify this? Current consoles also don’t use any of the draconian DRM that MS will be utilizing – which is all of the most anti-consumer rubbish they can think of…….To prevent us from doing things that are perfectly legal none the less.
There is no way I’m buying the PS4 either if Sony utilize the same kind of crap. People who try to justify this and everything else obviously just doesn’t get it. This isn’t only about the here and now, its also about the precedent it sets and the future of gaming. MS are testing the market, think about the bigger picture!