I've posted here before that it's very hard to be any sort of aficionado of Japanese arcade games unless you actually live in Japan and go to the arcade there, and the situation is even worse for the guys who play arcade shooting games. But let's review: while PS3 games are all region-free, making importing simple, Microsoft offers Xbox 360 developers the choice of whether or not they want to region lock their games. Japanese developers have unanimously decided to lock their games, meaning that you can't play legitimate Japanese imports on an American 360 without actually modifying the hardware. Unfortunately, many ports of arcade games exclusive to 360 remain in Japan, like many of Cave's recent shooters and that Idolmaster thing all the pedophiles like.
This is obviously a pain in the ass for people who want to play these games outside of Japan. These guys actually have to buy Japanese 360s, create Japanese Live accounts, and pay import markup for XBL points because their Japanese accounts won't take their foreign credit cards. Many of these people have been Cave fans: Cave fans around the world are pretty well-known for being nuts.
Cave has taken notice of the pleas of their foreign fans, and while they haven't set up a US distribution deal--the Gamestops and Walmarts of the world would not be thrilled to stock 2D shooting games that they definitely won't be able to sell-- they have, for the first time in their history, done something for these long-suffering individuals. The coming home release of Mushihime-sama Futari will be region-free. You can just pop it into your 360, and it'll work. This is the first time I can recall offhand where a Japan release that wasn't immediately coming out in the West was region-free. This coming from the company that used to say to their foreign fans: "We sure hope you can come to Japan and play our games soon!" I'm not even that into Cave games, but I'm going to buy this because I want to see these companies figure it out already and make the smart choice.
That said, here is probably what will happen with download content: material for Japanese games, from demos to videos to in-game content, only appears in the Japanese Xbox Marketplace. You need to make a Japanese account, download the stuff, and then log into your real account to use it in the game. This is the only ass pain you will likely experience when playing this game. I've also heard that 5pb's ports of earlier Cave games were really bad, but Cave seems to be doing this themselves so there shouldn't be a problem.
Hopefully Japanese companies making niche games will realize the foolishness of region-locking on any platform, though recent developments with that pedophile game hint otherwise. Even from their point of view, all I see region-locking doing for a publisher-- especially these niche guys who need every sale they can get-- is losing them a small number of sales around the world and pushing those same people that much closer to just pirating the damn thing. Did I mention that DS piracy is really, really easy, to the point where everybody I know but me does it, and they constantly ask me why I'm not doing it the moment they look at my DS? Because region locking only helps that situation, Namco.
As a side note, if anyone can sell me a cheap copy of Mahjong Fight Club DS, hook a brother up: I'm not paying $70.
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