I read about this story a couple of days ago, and was appalled at the number of people who talked him down, laughing and generally disrespecting the man.

I dunno what to say other than, are you guys idiots?

(more…)

Here we are in the year 2010 and we still haven’t gotten over the problem with region restrictions on consoles.

(more…)

http://kotaku.com/5402591/report-xbox-live-bannings-upwards-of-1-million

Okay, I see some myths rolling around in the comments, so I’ll make it quite clear and crisp here:

1. Even if you mod a console, you cannot play any imports with it. As a result, the only reason you have to mod it is to play illegal duplicates of games.
2. Only installing games to the 360 is locked out; savegames and others are still okay. On this note, if you install a 360 game to the HDD using one 360, you cannot use it on another 360; you have to re-install it there.

I’m disappointed that the majority of users in the Kotaku comments are misrepresenting #1 and #2 in different and stupid ways to try and defend modding a console, and defend how a console is banned. If you’ve modded your console, you have to be ready for the consequences. Failing to plan for them is planning to fail.

http://zepy.momotato.com/2009/08/16/indy-galge-stopped-from-distribution-on-xbox-live/

I did a bit of investigation and checked out the Xbox Live Marketplace… what I found was that 248 Indie games were available on the Japan marketplace, while some 408 were available on the US/Europe marketplace. And of those numbers, only some games were shared but not all.

Needless to say, I think this is more a problem on the author’s part for not checking content restrictions and restricting it to the region it’s supposed to be limited to. Otherwise, all 408 games would have appeared on both marketplaces, rather than this not so mutually exclusive (or not exclusive at all) state of affairs.

Edit: Just found this:

Games are now evaluated for “one world” or worldwide approval.

…

Each game has to match the standards of all countries we support – that means the strictest standard will be applied for all countries. A game must pass all criteria before being allowed for sale in ANY Xbox LIVE marketplace.

Guess it’s the way the games are made then. If this was the policy, why on earth did the author decide to put a galge like this on Indie Games…?

http://kotaku.com/5336183/xbox-360-games-on-demand-region-locked

Yeah, I had seen this coming. First problem was that the games were not valued by Microsoft Points, as originally intended. This means that I would need a Japanese credit card with valid address and everything, should I want to digitally download any Japanese games. Strike 1.

Next, even if I did have the access, if you see the link above, you won’t be able to download US games outside of the US. Strike 2.

Lastly, the Xbox Originals are not region locked. Strike 3.

So clearly, M$ is not sure what the hell their strategy is with Games on Demand…

I only had five games installed beforehand that I can vouch for in terms of installation size, so here they are, pre and post-XBL preview update:

Halo 3: 6.3 GB -> 5.7 GB (-9.52%)
Lost Planet: 6.9 GB -> 6.8 GB (-1.45%)
Lost Planet Colonies: 6.7 GB -> 6.6 GB (-1.49%)
Resident Evil 5: 6.8 GB -> 6.7 GB (-1.47%)
Street Fighter IV: 5.7 GB -> 4.6 GB (-19.3%)

Looks like I just got accepted into the program. Mind you guys, I won’t be mentioning anything here NDA (though I’m pretty sure there will be very little, I hope).

I’m not sure if developers care enough about the testers accepted into the closed beta, but I did post a thread in the private forums about Games on Demand and region restrictions. Here’s hoping they will all be region-free (or cause games to go region-free).