E3 2011: Vita Thumbs its Nose at 3DS, Boasts Region-Free Capabilities

Post by nachosjustice @ 07:52am 10/06/11 | 10 Comments

It’s no secret that there’s not a whole lot of love lost between the likes of Sony and Microsoft with their respective current-generation consoles and how, every so often, they seem to enjoy having a direct (or indirect) shot at their respective nemesis. But when it comes to the mobile world of handheld consoles, it’s a Sony versus Nintendo affair.

According to this article at Gamepro, the PlayStation Vita will be region free. This means that Australian Vita owners won’t be restricted to paying artificially inflated retail prices and can source their games internationally. 3DS owners, on the other hand, are gaming on a handheld console that marks the first Nintendo mobile gaming platform to be region restricted.

e3 2011 playstation vita 3ds

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icewyrm
Posted 08:01am 10/6/11

Region locking is annoying, anyone with some smarts will end up importing both the console itself and all of the games they get for it to avoid problems.

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ravn0s
Posted 08:08am 10/6/11

cool. most people will just import it from the US since it will probably be around $400 here.

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Mosfxx
Posted 10:19am 10/6/11

Doesn't worry me as I buy my games from ozgameshop.com Zelda $42.99 pretty sure EB will be $69.

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DM
Posted 10:37am 10/6/11

IMO the reason the PSP did as well as it did (Hey it could of been a lot worse) was that it was region free and many many people like myself used it for japanese or korean games. I'm not kidding when I say the DJ Max Portable series got eaisly over 300 hours worth of playtime from me, and in fact ended up breaking my PSP's thumbstick thing from so much use. 4 games, 2 rare Collectors editions later it's still my favorite game series. In fact I may install it again right now on my new pc.

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Raven
Posted 10:43am 10/6/11

It's funny how they can boast that region free is so important to users that it's present, but when it comes to BluRay and/or PS3, no no, it's important titles be region locked.

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DM
Posted 10:45am 10/6/11

Yeah i'm not sure what they are afraid of with region locked movies. Though aren't most DVDs now days able to be played on most dvd players anyway? I got dvds from the states and japan that work on my player/tv fine.

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Pinky
Posted 10:48am 10/6/11

It's funny how they can boast that region free is so important to users that it's present, but when it comes to BluRay and/or PS3, no no, it's important titles be region locked.

Yeah, I agree. I think they'll probably be eating their own words when it comes to their next portable console system. But hey, I'd love to be proven wrong. Regioning is the opposite of what the world is about in a global economy. That's what currencies are for.

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paveway
Posted 10:54am 10/6/11

i thought ps3 games weren't region locked?

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skythra
Posted 10:54am 10/6/11

It's funny how they can boast that region free is so important to users that it's present, but when it comes to BluRay and/or PS3, no no, it's important titles be region locked.

They'll spend billions of man hours on making sure their security stops homebrew and linux, and then forget to update their servers.

OOPS.

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DM
Posted 11:29am 10/6/11

i thought ps3 games weren't region locked?

They're not unless sony rolls out an update to stop this which I don't even see them doing. Can you imagine the s*** storm that would happen with the hackers if sony took out another feature of the console?

EDIT - Speaking of the PS3, God the new Rune Factory looks incredibly sweet. Why did I sell my PS3 god damnit. I don't wanna have to buy another one. ugh.

last edited by DM at 11:29:53 10/Jun/11

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