Region restrictions (rage-post)
Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 4:25 pm
Ok, Im getting angry. Sometimes(quite often) I wish I was born in america. Im sure some of you don't even know abouth this, but it is f***** . The entertainment industry, specifically the guys who provide everyone with movies, TV-Shows and games are treating some(read: many) of their customers like crap. They have the products, we want to buy them, but they fail to deliever them. This post is dedicated to everyone who's seen a message similar to this: "The service is not availble in your country/region...". Some examples follow, please reply and discuss eventually add more cases.
Example 1: iTunes
I'm a great fan of the NBC show "Heroes", but here in Norway there is no legal way to watch the latest episodes, I'm not talking about a 1-2 week delay, season 4 starts in the US soon and we don't even know when season 3 will be aired here. So I find the show in the iTunes store, all seasons in both SD and HD, at a reasonable price but of course - I AM NOT ALLOWED TO BUY THEIR FRIGGIN PRODUCT, seriously they don't want my money. If I insist on paying for the episodes I will have to use a US proxy and a fake address in order to get a US iTunes account. How stupid is this. And they keep scratching their heads on how to reduce piracy...
Example 2: XBox Live Community Games
So as everyone should know by now, trufun released Bop 'N Pop for the 360 some weeks ago, and I wanted to check it out... -> "This offer isn't availble in your region...". So essentially Microsoft says "No way!", "You can't have that game, and trufun is better off without your money". Grrrrr.....
Example 3: BlazBlue - Calamity Trigger
Some days ago I watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUxh8sDIJg0 . I thought it looked really cool and decided to pick it up since it was already realeased. I was in the store today and didn't find the game. When I came home I found out that the game never was released in Europe, and there aren't any plans for it either. As if that wasn't enough, the US copies of the game are region coded just in case, so that no X360 gamers in Europe will be able to play it.
I know some of you will start talking about copyrights, deals, agreements, marketing/publishing cost and more complications, but cmon there isn't really a good reason for this. They should be able to get the deals and agreements, set up the servers and give the whole world a chance to choose not to go piracy methods. Dunno if anyone minds reading this but I was angry, and it kinda helped. Now I'm going away on vacation for a week.
Example 1: iTunes
I'm a great fan of the NBC show "Heroes", but here in Norway there is no legal way to watch the latest episodes, I'm not talking about a 1-2 week delay, season 4 starts in the US soon and we don't even know when season 3 will be aired here. So I find the show in the iTunes store, all seasons in both SD and HD, at a reasonable price but of course - I AM NOT ALLOWED TO BUY THEIR FRIGGIN PRODUCT, seriously they don't want my money. If I insist on paying for the episodes I will have to use a US proxy and a fake address in order to get a US iTunes account. How stupid is this. And they keep scratching their heads on how to reduce piracy...
Example 2: XBox Live Community Games
So as everyone should know by now, trufun released Bop 'N Pop for the 360 some weeks ago, and I wanted to check it out... -> "This offer isn't availble in your region...". So essentially Microsoft says "No way!", "You can't have that game, and trufun is better off without your money". Grrrrr.....
Example 3: BlazBlue - Calamity Trigger
Some days ago I watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUxh8sDIJg0 . I thought it looked really cool and decided to pick it up since it was already realeased. I was in the store today and didn't find the game. When I came home I found out that the game never was released in Europe, and there aren't any plans for it either. As if that wasn't enough, the US copies of the game are region coded just in case, so that no X360 gamers in Europe will be able to play it.
I know some of you will start talking about copyrights, deals, agreements, marketing/publishing cost and more complications, but cmon there isn't really a good reason for this. They should be able to get the deals and agreements, set up the servers and give the whole world a chance to choose not to go piracy methods. Dunno if anyone minds reading this but I was angry, and it kinda helped. Now I'm going away on vacation for a week.