Region-locking: truly a two-way street that goes nowhere.
Last year, I spent two months studying abroad at the Yamasa Institute in Okazaki, Japan. One of the people I met there working for the school was a US expat and Japanese history buff who was extremely excited about The Creative Assembly’s upcoming PC title, Total War: Shogun 2. He contacted me recently to let me know that there is no way to access a demo version of the game because Steam has a specific region-lock in place for that title in Japan. Total War: Shogun 2 is a game about Japan, taking place in Japan, published by a Japanese company, and starring some of the most iconic figures in Japanese history, and people in Japan can’t play it. Am I the only one who finds this situation terribly ironic? I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t know publisher Sega’s localization/release plan for the title in Japan, but this seems fishy, particularly if there are no plans to bring the title over. Admittedly, region-locking is currently a very sticky issue (involving tariffs and currency differences across regions), but it is becoming even stickier in the digital download marketplace.
In the case of disc-based releases, region-locking in Japan is implemented for a variety of reasons. Generally, as seems to be the case with shoot-em-up developer CAVE, region-locking is used as “insurance” against importers when trying to market the game to Western publishers. CAVE has recently announced that the Xbox 360-exclusive port of its Japanese arcade shooter, Akai Katana Shin, will be region-locked to Japanese Xbox 360 consoles when it releases later this year. They later announced on their English Twitter feed that they are hoping for publishers to pick it up for localization and release in Western markets. Logistically, CAVE is willing to take a bet that a game is more likely to be picked up by a publisher for Western release if it wasn’t accessible to the import community. Usually that’s a bad bet, particularly when you’re dealing with Xbox 360 exclusives in Japan. Casualties of this process so far include Ketsui and DeathSmilesIIX, neither of which received attention from Western publishers (even after the original DeathSmiles was released internationally courtesy of Aksys Games), and both of which would have been purchased by international fans of the shoot-em-up genre if made region-free. CAVE would rather have a region-locked game bomb in Japan due to the small userbase of the Xbox 360 and potentially have a Western release for that game, than guarantee at least a few sales overseas by making the title region-free in the first place. I will admit that sales potential in the West is probably far greater if the game is localized and purchasable at Western retailers (rather than relegated to online import exchange stores like NCSX and PlayAsia), so perhaps the math works out for them – even if very few titles are considered for localization.
In many other cases, region-locking is used as a price protection measure (as with Nintendo’s upcoming 3DS) and a way to make console game piracy more difficult. In the case of Total War: Shogun 2, a PC title on Steam, none of these really apply except for publisher protection. It should be noted that PS3 and Xbox 360 content specific to a region can only be accessed by accounts of that region (which, with a little fumbling around in menus, can be created for both consoles). There are measures in place to prevent consoles from other regions from playing certain types of content, though in the case of games, those protection measures are rarely used for the HD systems. The Wii’s Shop Channel is specific to each region, but access isn’t IP-monitored so any version of the channel can be accessed from any region. This assumes, of course, that a corresponding region’s Wii is used to do so. For example, a Japanese Wii is needed to access the Japanese store, PAL Wii for PAL store, and so on. In the case of PC distribution services, such as Steam, region-locking is apparently built-in and IP-based. If future consoles implement the same kind of region-locking as Steam, it could have far-reaching implications on the worldwide gaming market for gamers, developers, and publishers alike.
In the past, it was easy enough to get around region locks by importing consoles themselves. Now, with digital distribution becoming more and more commonplace, it is becoming more difficult to access content from other regions (as shown with Steam region-locking the demo of Total War: Shogun 2). I’ve spoken in past editorials about the dangers of regional content lockouts on creativity in game development, though I understand why it’s implemented on a corporate level. With gaming becoming more risk-aversive, formulaic, and centered on marketing, I feel that stifling inspiration, creativity, and cultural awareness by regional lockout is not a good idea. This is not a road-to-nowhere that the industry needs to travel.
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