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Just last week Nintendo announced the ‘new' 3DS, a significant hardware upgrade over the original model. Since then, more and more details have been coming out surrounding the handheld, the most recent discovery is that Nintendo will be sticking with region locking, meaning that 3DS owners won't be able to play games outside of their market.
For example, an American 3DS won't be able to play games bought from Japan. While region locking used to the norm, these days its rare. Sony has a history of not region locking its consoles and Microsoft's Xbox 360 would allow publishers to decide whether a game should be region locked or not.
Nintendo fans have been very vocal about wanting the opportunity to import games exclusive to other territories such as Japan. However, Nintendo has gone ahead and stuck to its guns by incorporating region locking on the Wii U, the old 3DS and now the new 3DS.
Last year, Nintendo President, Saturo Iwata, said that these region locks were places on the company's systems due to legal restrictions and cultural differences in different territories. This means that Nintendo is required to do different things to comply with laws all around the world, which can make its job harder.
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KitGuru Says: I wasn't particularly pleased when the new 3DS was announced as games made for the updated hardware won't work on older systems. However, if Nintendo had released it as a new product entirely, I probably could have accepted it. Additionally, the second thumb stick doesn't look like it's even worth having, the start and select buttons should have moved under the touch screen to make space for a proper thumbstick instead- although that's just my opinion. What do you guys think of region locking? What did you think of the ‘new' 3DS announcement?
Source: MCV
The region locking sucks, but I don’t think your comment about the c-stick (the right thumb stick) is correct.
The updated hardware is so that it can run ports over better (Such as the new Xenoblade) which would be too graphically demanding for the old 3ds, which means possibility of more “HD” remakes (Mario Sunshine HD anyone) and the c-stick will let them play like they did on the game cube.
Not to mention Smash for 3ds, a c-stick is a must have.
I’m sure someone will figure out a way around it, anyway.
Solid reasoning but… well, Nintendo will always be a few steps behind everyone else, unfortunately. They might grow up one day.
But you’re missing the most important point, in my oppinion. Nintendo is upgrading the hardware in the middle of a console cycle, making people ,who already own the current version of the console, unable to play the new games released. This will force people to buy what is more or less the exact same console as before, in order to play any new games released within that console cycle. “It’s still a 3DS, but it’s new and your old 3DS will have to be replaced if you want to play the sequels to the games you love,” is basically what they’re saying.
Nintendo are the only relevant company in the handheld business. They decide when the console cycle starts and ends, the handhelds don’t follow the home consoles and if they can bring us better games NOW, power to them.
They’ve done it in the past with the DS -> DS Lite = 3ds -> 3ds XL and now they’ve done the DS Lite -> DSi to the 3ds -> New 3ds.
It’s completely understandable.
I guess time will tell if the consumers are gonna buy into it once again.
They are already doing better than Microsoft/Sony nowadays in some part of the world…..