Alarm bells ring at Microsoft towers at the mention of regionalised software
As it transpires, we were the first to call Microsoft’s UK press office regarding the issue of regionalising software and did we kick up a stink!?
In case you don’t fully understand the issues surrounding regional protection allow us to explain.
Companies make software that will only play on machines bought in the same region. The regions fall into three main groups. Europe, Asia (including Australia), and America. You may remember that the NES cartridges were much larger than the Famicom carts meaning that without major surgery to either console or cartridge, the games wouldn’t play. Then when 16 Bit machines arrived, this concept was continued and game carts were different shapes for different regions.
With the arrival of the 32 Bit machines, things became much more hi-tech and digital regional encrypting was employed. This worked in a fairly basic way with each region’s console needing to read a different set of codes from each game disc before it would boot. This concept has been carried forward, with today’s games machines operating on pretty much the same principle.
There was no mention of how the upcoming Xbox would be region protected, fuelling speculation that the PC giants would make multi region consoles. (There is no protection on PC games.) When we first called Microsoft about this, everything seemed calm and under control. “We’ll have to contact the American office for details and get back to you,” said a relaxed official. The next day was a different story. “We can, at this point, make no comment either way regarding the issues of regionalisation” said the same very flustered official.
Can open? Worms everywhere? We’ll have to wait and see.
Companies make software that will only play on machines bought in the same region. The regions fall into three main groups. Europe, Asia (including Australia), and America. You may remember that the NES cartridges were much larger than the Famicom carts meaning that without major surgery to either console or cartridge, the games wouldn’t play. Then when 16 Bit machines arrived, this concept was continued and game carts were different shapes for different regions.
With the arrival of the 32 Bit machines, things became much more hi-tech and digital regional encrypting was employed. This worked in a fairly basic way with each region’s console needing to read a different set of codes from each game disc before it would boot. This concept has been carried forward, with today’s games machines operating on pretty much the same principle.
There was no mention of how the upcoming Xbox would be region protected, fuelling speculation that the PC giants would make multi region consoles. (There is no protection on PC games.) When we first called Microsoft about this, everything seemed calm and under control. “We’ll have to contact the American office for details and get back to you,” said a relaxed official. The next day was a different story. “We can, at this point, make no comment either way regarding the issues of regionalisation” said the same very flustered official.
Can open? Worms everywhere? We’ll have to wait and see.
Companies:
Microsoft
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