DSi: Distributor Stupidity Illustration
With the unveiling of the new DSi, a cut-and-shut update to Nintendo’s deservingly popular dual-screen handheld, Nintendo have announced they are – after 20 years of manufacturing portable consoles – introducing region locking to their software.
Why? Having been the bastion of the hardcore for so long via the Game Boy line of machines, why Nintendo suddenly sees fit to artificially lock out buyers from different territories seems utterly ridiculous. It doesn’t matter how you spin it: a sale is a sale is a sale.
Now, granted, the amount of profit platform holders like Nintendo can skim off the top of each sale is known to fluctuate quite wildly between retail territories. This has always been the case and I’m not going on some “rip-off Britain” crusade with it here either. If you don’t like it, sell your consoles, because nothing’s changed in the 20 years I’ve been playing videogames.
What’s most beguiling about this is that, in this pathetic effort to defeat “lost sales” via grey importers short-circuiting (often painfully) staggered territorial releases, companies like Nintendo are actually accellerating the problem. They’re also contributing directly to mass piracy. If you, as a publisher, can’t – or simply don’t care to – properly organise worldwide software releases, your potential customers will not wait.
