Does region-locking prevent or foster piracy?
The latest issue of games TM has an interesting piece on Nintendo’s worrying decision to region-lock the 3DS. While the Nintendo spokesman contacted for comment by the magazine gives a predictably crappy justification, I was more taken aback by the opinion of one Shinji Enomoto, a producer at Konami, who seems to believe that region-locking can help prevent piracy.
Surely, that can’t be right, can it? Region-locking will prevent gamers from importing games that have no official release in their own part of the world. Right now, with region-agnostic platforms, people can buy those games legally from retailers in the regions where they are published. In a region-locked future we will be forced to turn to modding our consoles or using boot disks.
Ubiquitous internet connectivity has made it easier for platform owners to spot such “breaches of the T&C” and punish the “perpetrators” by bans or firmware updates. But in the case of region-locking, they will be fighting against an enemy they have created themselves by limiting the use of their platform in the first place.
Am I the only one who thinks this makes no sense?
