Apparently the PS3 will have no region lock-outs for games.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/697/697656p1.html

Yay, finally a global company is thinking... globally 

Yeah, who'd a thunk that would ever happen?

Seriously though, this is going to have big ramifications on companies like Square Enix that like to take their sweet old time getting European versions of stuff out.  I wouldn't be surprised if they try to prevent retailers from selling the U.S. version overseas.  Ever notice on EBgames.com how Nintendo products say "ships to U.S. addresses only?"  Thank goodness for places like NCSX...

I did like the news when I heard it.

But now I wonder...is that only for PS3 games, or will it be able to play PS1 and PS2 games region-free also?

That's what I'm wondering. If it's completely backwards-compatible it would be fantastic. Finally, one single Playstation for all my games.

Why?  What does Sony gain from this?

If they don't lose anything either, then why not?

There doesn't seem to be any downfalls, hardware/console-wise, so it would only affect software, which wouldn't bother Sony much as they don't make a ton of 1st party titles...

It would challenge the software makers to have multiple languages ready at launch, but movies studios are facing those same challenges with film dvds making simultaneous multi-region launches as well, so that's a general shift across all media types and not just Sony/PS3 specific. 

Any potential loss of revenue would come from a decreased ability to exploit regional price-fixing (selling identical products to one region higher than what they charge another region) but that's been a practice many consumers would be glad to see cleaned up anyways.

It's not going to be boosting anybody's revenues, but there isn't much risk of loss either, right?

And I, as well. Mwahaha....I could finally play all my Japanese games without being confined to a certain room from which my import PS2 is currently immovable...

Sorry to burst bubbles, guys, but PS3 isn't inherently 'region-free.' It's just that Blu-Ray encoding puts Japan and North America in the same region. So, Japanese PS3 games will play on a North American PS3, but European ones won't and non-NA PS2 and PS1 games won't either, since they don't use BR encoding.

Awwww....daaaang. Oh well, I don't mind still keeping my old PS2s in use.

So are you saying that NTSC (US or JP) PS3 games won't work on a PAL PS3? If that's the case, then it would appear that Europe has got screwed AGAIN since it's the PAL gamers that have the most to gain from this region-free feature (i.e. PAL games are usually lazily converted with black bars and at 50hz, and games like RPGs take 6 months or longer to reach European shores, or in some cases, never).

Anyway, region-free PS3s are nice but are they that big a deal?. Unless game developers make use of the BlueRay DVD space and include all voice acting and languages as soon as the game is released, then IMO region-free games is just a gimmick.

e.g. 1: Generally, there is no point in American gamers importing a Japanese game, since it's in Japanese which most don't understand (exception: Action / Fighting games, but they usually are translated quickly anyway). No point importing PAL games either since there is most likely an NTSC U/C equivalent.

e.g. 2: Generally, there is no point in Japanese gamers importing English games (exception: An American game company releases a very good English exclusive game that the Japanese might like...unlikely)

e.g. 3: However, European gamers no longer have to put up with crap PAL conversions, 6 month game release delays, or non-releases. That's assuming NTSC games can play on a PAL PS3.

So, as far as I can see, region-free only benefits a few groups: Western gamers who can understand the Japanese language, Western game importers/collectors, and European gamers (a big group).

Having said that, I play some Japanese games myself so region-free is better than no region-free. Because region-locking suuuuuuuuuucks.

I thought HDTVs mooted the PAL/NTSC struggle.

Yup, Europe unfortunately falls under Region 2, along with Africa of all places. Russia, China, and 'other countries' comprise Region 3. The region-free buzz probably took off when someone realized they could import from Japan and just assumed the rest.

That said, this being Sony, it's entirely possible they're working on something that will have the same effect as region lockouts anyway. Incidents from the past year alone (mainly the messy secret encodings on music CDs which auto-installed copy inhibition) have shown that property protection supercedes common sense in their minds.

Don't know about the HDTV thing. That'd likely be your best option in Europe, except with the costs of technology and importing, you'll have to buy rich enough to buy an island if you want a decent collection anytime soon. So, uh, yeah...

Seems to me like they're more interested in making mod chips less popular.  People that install mods for playing imports will probably end up playing copies as well since they can.

Don't confuse Blu-Ray movies with Blu-Ray games.  Just like UMD movies and UMD games don't share the same regional lock-out schemes.  Phil Harrison specifically mentioned that a game could be released as one multilingual SKU.

Whether or not that will happen is another story.  Are they going to lock out the alternate languages based on the region of your console?  Or can anybody decide which audio track and which language of subtitle/dialogue to use?  That would be extremely worthwhile for consumers.

Now THAT would be quite clever, don't you think?  My guess would be that those type of choices would be made by each publisher on a game by game basis.

Now I also have to wonder, if SE allows the alternate languages to be accessible by any PS3 regardless of it's region, how do we know that game companies will put the languages there for the initial release of the game?  It would either slow down game release by forcing them to translate for all the major locals first, or they would still end up releasing seperately for different regions based on language.  Take Kingdom Hearts 2 for example.  The game had been long released in Japan and I had beaten it before a release date had even REALLY been set for the US.  Say this was a PS3 game.  If they were making one global release, they would have had to push back the release date until localization for the major regions had been fully completed before releasing it ANYWHERE.  Otherwise, they would still release it in Japan first, then the English language would have been released in the US, parts of Europe, etc.  Completing multiple localizations before any release wouldn't be in the game companies' interests, they want the game out and producing hype as soon as they can.  So in the long run, I really don't think there will be any huge benefit besides not needing to mod your console to play an import game.

It could be translated as the game is in development, which would quicken turnaround time and lower the costs to foreign divisions.  That's assuming that a worldwide release is even considered, since a lot of games aren't released in all three main markets (Japan, US, Europe).

However, that doesn't account for what will occur with manufacturing times (box and manual design), as well as what effect that will have on those firms that don't care for international releases for a particular game and leave it up to companies like Atlus or the now-defunct Working Designs to option.

Eh, so again, I'm really not sure why this was announced... and it was announced at the GDC, right?  So his target audience was presumably the game developer community itself.

Not that SquareEnix is competent, but KH2's release is a bit complicated by the involvement of Disney.  I'm certain Disney wants the proper voice actor or voice actor-equivalent accurately doing their character voices because they defend their properties strictly.  However, the extremely long wait for FFXII to come out in the US goes back to SquareEnix---either their US division is slow, there is voice acting, or they are paid for a target date that defies consumer satisfaction (ie Sony paid them off to release it on a certain day, like FFVIII v Dreamcast).

Each company will do what it wants in that regard, and I highly doubt major efforts like RPGs will see just one global release.  But the lack of region coding for games could be a big boon for smaller developers willing to put in the extra resources for an additional language or two but without a major distribution partner.  I know I'd be a lot more likely to import some more weird Japanese games if they had an English option and I knew they'd work on my system.

FFXII is Q4 in the U.S., right?  I think this is probably just Squenix trying to give itself a big game for Xmas since it doesn't really have anything else that Americans care about (though it should be interesting to see how Vincent does here) and the minor titles like FM5 and CoM will just be used as filler.

While Sony has had an interest in influencing third party releases in the past to position against the competition, I can't think of anything for Sony to position FFXII against.  Zelda is its own force.  Gears of War, if it actually comes out this year, isn't really competing for the same audience, and the only other major titles not for PS2 (pending E3 announcements of course) are likely to be either handheld or whatever Nintendo launches the Revolution with.  I suppose FFXII could deter Revolution sales, but I'm not sure Sony even cares how well the Revolution does since it's going after a completely different segment.