Page 1 of US Dead or Alive 4 ....No Region Code!

Maybe this is old news, but i have just bought the US version of DOA 4, which works just fine with PAL 360s.

I think the graphics are astounding, gonna try out the online mode now.

This item was edited on Sunday, 15th January 2006, 19:35

Are you playing it on HDTV?

My TV does 480p, from what i have heard it will play the game as long as you swirch off 50hz.

Apparently the US version of Ridge Racer works too..


"Six bucks and my right nut say we`re not landing in Chicago..."

This might be a new universal strategy. Sony are making the PS3 region free for games, apparently, same as the PSP.

The general theory is that most people who want to play import games have to get their machines chipped to do so. This leads to the darkside (piracy).

So by taking out one of the main reasons for modding machines, the piracy issue is thusly reduced.

I dont know whether its true or not, but it would be nice to have the option of playing something like Psychonauts in the year before its released in Europe.......

I will be well impressed with Sony if they do remove all the region encoding.

There are so many games that don`t make it out in Europe that I`d love to play but don`t because of region encoding. And like NTG says, would be good to be able to play things from the US a long time before they get released prperly in Europe.

Why do developers think that Europe should have to wait months or even years (square enix?? eh??)

I hear that for the 360 region encoding is down to the publishers, so i guess we can expect all Microsoft studio games to be regionlocked (and probably EA - simply cos they`re evil!) and the smaller developers leaving them region unlocked.

Quote:
Why do developers think that Europe should have to wait months or even years

There actually some good valid reasons, it`s not just about fleecing Europeans ;)

The usual suspects are:

1) Translations.
Release a game in Europe, you have to do at very least English, German, French, Spanish, Italian. It`s not just a case of sending it off to the translations, you then have to completely test the game in each of the languages.

USA probably just does English, and sometimes Spanish.

2) TV settings.

Developers can`t win here. PSOne, ppl moan because Tekken 1 has slow down, and ugly PAL borders `cos of lazy rushed Namco conversion. Other devco try to do it properly, i.e. keep full speed, remove borders, ppl moan that game is 3 months later coming out here than USA.

I`ve never really understood why ppl moan so much about waiting anyway

Lets say USA Schedule

Nov
console launches with average games

JAN
AAA US title 1 is launched

March
AAA US title 2 is launched

August
AAA US title 3 is launched

etc etc

Europe

Console Sep launch with average games

Nov
US AAA Title 1 released in Europe

JAN
AAA US title 2 is launched in Europe

You see where I`m going here, it works both ways, we get soem games before them, and it doesn`t really matter if you`re always 2 or 3 months behind, `cos you still get a new good game every 3 months.

I think.

There`s some other good/valid reasons but I forget what they are off the top of my head.

Al
www.admars.co.uk

I appreciate that there`s the whole NTSC-PAL conversion thing and translations, but, the developers know at the beginning of the process that they will be releasing in multiple languages around the world and in a PAL territory. They have talented programmers who have done this type of thing before. It`s not like the languages or PAL are new!

How hard is it for them to sort it out as they go along or within a few weeks of finishing the original coding?

Fair enough a wait of a couple of months while they tinker with a few region specific things but certain developers just take the mickey - 6 months to a year is far too long to do the conversion/language.

Take Square-Enix as an example (but they aren`t alone), there can often be a 12 month gap between Japanese release and European release. I don`t believ it can take that long to do the job properly. Square-enix are also guilty of doing poor PAL conversions that mess up the screen size, and that takes them up to a year to do.


And then to add insult to injury we Europeans have to pay more for our games that are old technology (and 6-12 months can be a long time in terms of gaming technnology) and poor conversions. Go figure!

OK, I do have some experience of this from when I was a games progammer, and were given some Japanese games to make ready for UK.

What you`re forgetting is that the final translations can only be done once the game is finished, as the text could change if during testing an error is found.

So we used to get the game, say it had a small section bottom of the screen, one line of Japanese text. You`d look at the English translation which would be 3 or 4 lines. So you have to jiggle the formatting to make the text fit.

Another thing is is the lengthy submission process when you submit a game to Sony or whoever. You "think" you`ve finished the game, you give it to them, they say it fails because of some strange reason. You fix that, give it back to them, they say it fails for somehting else. This can go on for ages :(

Probably not so relevent to the big boys with big franchises with Final Fantasy series etc.

But it costs a lot of money for translators it`s not normally done in house. S look at a title liek Katamari Damacy. There was no way Sony were going to make thousands of units of that, go through all the hassle of translations before knowing they had a sure fire hit on their hands. i.e. they wait till the original is a hit in Japan, before releasing sequals overseas.

Have a look at the Japanese charts (www.gamasutra.com) see how many games you`ve heard of, loads are never seen outside Japan. Using Final Fantasy as an example, wasn`t FF3 the first oen to be release outside Japan, but that is actually 5 in Japan or something like that!

So now Square know FF will be a hit, Capcom know Res Evil will be, but like everyone else they don`t want to launch a gam ein direct competition to another big hitter of the same ilk, unless it`s the run up to Christmas, when they want to save their games for ;)

As for the PAL thing, unfortunately it`s not just as simple as changing one line of code :(

Remember Sqaure Japan`s head honcho is telling the lead on FF23 that he wants it out for their peak period for sale. So if that is v close, he`s gonna put all the work on other countries on the back burner, so the JPN company can make their share holders etc happy.

Al

www.admars.co.uk

May be a daft question, but if I bought an imort copy, it wouldnt make a difference for playing online against a player with a UK version?

"Six bucks and my right nut say we`re not landing in Chicago..."