Sony's Dave Karraker vs Gamasutra

Sony's new senior director of corporate communications, Dave Karraker, is talking to Gamasutra. They really take a piece out of him, too, pretty much calling him a liar to his face a couple of times. It's worth reading for the following reasons:

(a) To count how many well-remembered games he name-checks in the opening paragraph.
(b) The admission that he was hired in part due to his strengths in "crisis communications".
(c) The first signs of a turnaround in the PS3, back to it being about gamers, not media consumers.
(d) He describes Ken Kutaragi's comments about the PS3 at TGS as "technically right", and as something that needs to be "interpreted".

All nice to hear. If he's not quite Sony's answer to the Regginator, he's a step in the right direction, and probably something they could do with a lot more of. Which is all by way of warming you up for the bombshell - probably the most important news for Australians:

GS: I know that the PS3 is essentially region free – will the downloadable content also be available worldwide, or region specific?
DK: All of the online stores are region-specific, so that’ll dictate where you can download the games.

Which is to say, the PS3 online marketplace will be subject to the same Gestapo-like censorship, epic localisation delays and inane release decisions which plague our storefront retail market. So that's another thing to not look forward to. I guess my hopes of playing a legal copy of Chrono Cross or the original Parasite Eve have just been rudely dashed once again.