According to French site PS3Gen it appears that the latest software development kit (and by extension, the latest firmware) allows developers to region lock their games to individual countries. The option’s always been in there to lock games to a region, but it’s never been used, despite Midway thinking about it for Stranglehold.
It’s not clear what the image is from below, it could just be the Netflix application which doesn’t run on a European PS3 anyway, but it looks like the site has delved into the SDK a little and the results could be interesting for those that bought a PS3 based on its region free gaming capabilities.
From what we can gather from the French, it looks like there might be different regions that drill down deeper than just the US, Europe and Asia. The site mentions the three we know about, but then has a ‘region 4’ for England (yes, I know) and others for Mexico, Oceania, Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Russia. There are 31 potential regions.
PS3Gen has another screengrab on the site that hints at a ‘region deny’ flag for games, and then shows a range of allowed regions.
We’ll keep an eye on this one.
KeRaSh
Sad, I only buy UK games since I enjoy playing them in English. Most of the time I could just set the PS3 system language to English (which I have anyways) to have the original voice/text but in some cases like Burnout Paradise it doesn’t have English content on the disc and just sets it back to a standard, which in that case was French. I almost cried…
UK games are also much cheaper than in Germany. I hate Germany…
GranTurismo-Disciple
I read somewhere that they want GT5 to be region locked due to sales or something..and if that game requires the new software maybe the region lock is true unfortunateley
metamorph
Bullshit. Another load of bullcrap from pirates.
Foxhound_Solid
Whatever will be will be, I cant see this happening though as its a selling point. If it does, I dont mind as I have patience and can wait for games to release…. I mean so many have come out lately I havent bought any as yet… Although Friday is looming