Quote:
Originally Posted by Alpo
I assume DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDorian has an XBox 360. Are 360 games region coded? If not, he could just import a US or whatever uncensored version. If they are, then I assume Australian XBoxes are the same region as European ones, which means he could probably import a European copy of the game. Or maybe I'm just stupid.  |
That's the question. No one knows whether GTA4 is region-encoded or not since it hasn't been released yet. I assumed that it probably wouldn't be region-encoded because it's by Rockstar, but my friend pointed out to me that Rockstar's Tabletop Tennis game was region-locked, which made me worry. I already ordered my US copy, so I'm hoping it's not locked.
As for your question. The three gaming consoles: Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 have different degrees of region locking. The worst is Wii, the best is PS3, and the Xbox 360 falls in the middle. To explain what I mean by that, all Wiis are 100% region-locked to their region. Japanese Wiis cannot play American Wii games. American Wiis cannot play Japanese Wii games, etc.. PS3 games are 100% region-free. There are no region-locked PS3 games. A PS3 can play American, Japanese, and European games (the reason for this being that Blu Rays, unlike DVDs, are region-free regardless of whether it's a movie or a game). Xbox 360s fall in the middle with a little over half of the games region-free and the rest being region-locked to some extent. Region-locked games are usually only playable with a 360 from a specific region, but sometimes they can be played in 2 regions, but in no others (for example, this particular game can be played on US and European 360s, but not on Japanese 360s or another game can be played on Japanese 360s and European 360s, but not on US 360s).
So it's a little complicated, I guess. But the company making the game decides how to lock or not lock the game, which makes me think it'll probably be region-free, but... what do I know?