Tuesday, October 14, 2008

DSi Region Locked

Remember how I was excited about the new Nintendo DSi?

Never mind.

The thing's region locked. No importing sweet, sweet gaming candy from Japan. Or America. In fact, I'd be pretty much just stuck with the distinctly lackluster game distribution network of Australia, which seems to largely involve seeing a game come out in America and then waiting for continental drift to bring it within my grasp. (Still a month till we get the original Rock Band!)

By itself that'd be... manageable, but when you combine it with the dropped GBA port it's a big turn-off. About 75% of my current DS library is GBA or imported. Not particularly keen to buy a functionally identical new system that less of my games will work on. Oh, and I'd bet money that it also locks out R4 cards, so that's hombrew off the menu too. Plus the lack of the GBA port means I can't use the Rumble Pak, I can't use the cross-generation functionality from the recent Pokemon games, and in the unlikely event that the DS card reader or trackball games ever make their way out of Japan they won't work either.

Bad Nintendo! Bad!

You can still save the system by telling me that GBA games will be available for download. I know you want to tell me that. Just give in.

2 comments:

Josh Miller said...

I don't know where you're getting your info from, Nintendo has never produced a region locked console, why would they start now?

Stevie J. said...

@Josh Miller - it has been established that the DSi shop accessed on the DSi system will be locked to the region the system was purchased from, meaning Aussies can't import a Japanese system and switch to the Australian DSi store for software.

Its all because Nintendo are being stupid and locking this stuff to the system it was downloaded on instead of following in Sony's footsteps and locking it to a separate login code that would allow the systems (and their online stores) to be accessed from all regions.