Home to be region-locked
PS3 Fanboy were shown a walkthrough of Home at E3 in which they brought with them a list of questions. One of them was whether Home will be region-locked and to the sadness of many, it will be. All the public areas (this excludes User Home Spaces obviously) will be region-locked so “experience [is] most suited to their tastes”. This means you cant play bowling or chess with your foreign mates. Bummer.
July 17, 2008 at 5:32 pm
They should allow European English-speakers to hang with us awesome Americans. haha whoelse, we’ll miss you in our home spaces
July 17, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Well this sucks, but I suppose we will always have our Home Spaces.
July 17, 2008 at 5:49 pm
what do you mean with “user´s home spaces”? Your apartment/house/mansion?
July 17, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Yes, a Users Home Space is indeed their appartment
July 17, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I think that’s fair they locked them. Something will be ok in the US but not is AU and so on…Protecting themselves and the companies who will pay for ads(content).
July 17, 2008 at 5:59 pm
The region lock stuff is probably because copyright laws and stuff about the media content.
Each country and region has his own laws and the right of distribution are different so its understandable.
July 17, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Damn it! That will be annoying.
I guess I could always invite you guys over to my place. Just make sure you don’t trash it and leave me with all the cleaning up to do in the morning!
July 17, 2008 at 6:24 pm
What about game spaces like warhawk and killzone were clans can plan strategy and launch into games, will these areas be regoin locked also?
July 17, 2008 at 7:01 pm
A little bit to clear things up… The areas shouldn’t be region for games. Atleast not in games that aren’t released in your language.
Even though it’d be nice to enter something like Haruhi No Suzumiya Games Space it’s not like I’d GREATLY benefit from it. Of course games like Warhawk hopefully they’ll have game spaces even if they haven’t been officially released in a country due to Region free games.
Also remember that in the American Home we’ll probably have advertisements from Rock Band 2, which is unfair to PAL territories that don’t even have Rock Band 1 yet. They can import but… the controllers don’t quite work right.
So… as you can see things are complicated in the world market since not everything has been entirely adapted to a global economy yet.
July 17, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Annnnddd… In one fell swoop the point of the “warhawk planning table” and anything else like that is gone. Unless that is a non-public space that you can invite people into.
Well done Sony, you could have solved load and localization issues in many ways. But you are sticking to your guns and do the bone-head solution of having region locks. And of course those of us in SCEE territories will continue to be ignored by that Sony it’s-not-japan-or-north-america localization office in the UK.
July 17, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I bet the main reason is to advertise more effectively in regional markets
July 17, 2008 at 7:11 pm
@Devon…
That makes sense..
July 17, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Was it ever said if we’d be able to put like a chess board in our place.. that would be cool..
July 17, 2008 at 7:14 pm
@DevonTheDue and Theossie:
That makes very little sense. They could have done that in different ways. At least the images we have seen so far the ads are just videos and pictures on walls. They could relatively easy have been region specific where you simply see different things.
Sure some parts could be locked off to “protect” the user from content not useful for your region. But completely locking the entire thing down in regions is not going to help make a success out of Home.
July 17, 2008 at 7:54 pm
@Tiran
Does it really affect you that much wether you’re hanging out with British or hanging out with Americans? I mean do you really want to go on at night to see a lot of people who speak very little English? I mean sure you can meet new people and stuff like that, but you gotta remember it might not be the best idea for Americans to be playing with different cultures.
Also remember China? You know… the people who enforce very strict laws on many things? Like Google for instance is not allowed to pull up Democracy on searches?
These problems go deeper than what you’re half assed thoughts are trying to complain about. You really have to think about THE WORLD and not just a few things. Would home really be that great if a bunch of Bigots are being anti-gai-jin (foreigners) so that there are some areas where there is such an anti-American, British, English, German, or what ever kind of sentiments that it really causes issues in the long run?
Is it really going to help your game playing to speak with people with a culture barrier? Like when other countries say they’re going to put a faggot out, talking about their cigarette. I can definately understand what they’re doing.
You all should agree, cause this is a big issue, and you don’t want to risk all the crappy people in the world making Home an outcast experience. Not everyone is friendly and also dont’ forget that having 6 million people coexisting can cause problems. This way they can micromanage better.
A simultaneous world wide release region free could essentially amount to… what happened with the MGS4 BETA and the GTA IV online experience for the first week or 2. Do you really want your first impression ruined? Or are you guys going to stop complaining and actually THINK.
No one seems to think anymore. They just instantly complain about it not being a perfect world. DUH! IT’S NOT!
July 17, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Well. FIrst off China is a non-issue: PS3 isn’t being sold there.
Second, yes it does affect me that it is region locked…. depending on how it is done. We don’t know yet, but on principle I think is is a bad idea based on issues that should have solved better. And your fanboy attitude to me being annoyed with it does not change that (let’s try to discuss issues without calling each other stupid. Okay?).
The language issue makes very little sense. The region lock just means that whoever is in one region (how they are gonna define regions is not certain) are locked together. If EU is one region we are still going to have plenty of languages around without anyone being able to speak to each other. And if regions are countries it would mean some of us would be stuck with a very small user base while the bigger countries have much more chance of meeting someone they can get along with.
Region lock does not solve problems with some people not being nice either. There are plenty of those all around the world.
As for issues mentioned with MSG4 and GTA4, well, those are obvious scalability issues. No matter how they sliced it there would have been problems. And do not forget that the servers are still joined in Home, as you can still invite everyone over to your house, you just can’t go to any public area with them.
Also in regard to load on release. Look to pretty much ANY MMO out there. They have all had issues in the first weeks. It is unavoidable because systems like these are some of the most complex around. I guess that is why Sony is just going to do is as an open beta for the first couple of months, so they can say “we told you there might be issues”.
July 20, 2008 at 9:24 pm
This could be very bad…….
I’ve got a warhawk clan consisting of Americans (I’m from the UK) and I had some resistance American friends who I used to team up with. So, are they now telling me I can’t discuss tactics with my clan buddies in the Warhawk war room? That would suck. I honestly thought I’d be able to talk with people from other countries, make some new friends and some new rivals
Oh well, so much for that…