Phil Harrison Video Interview

[Kabbage]

Most things already known but maybe...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3180167084886101633&q=GDC+2006&pl=true

Hope it hasnt been posted yet

*Thanks to Flop_King @ PSINext*

 

[Sindre]

Although, as you said, most is known, it's good to hear things with your own ears once in a while, as teh intarnet has an incredible ability to tranform real information into fairytales some times;-)

Thanks for the link!

 

[Kabbage]

Although, as you said, most is known, it's good to hear things with your own ears once in a while, as teh intarnet has an incredible ability to tranform real information into fairytales some times;-)

Thanks for the link!

Indeed, so much gets skewed by misinterpretation and general bias, it is good to have what he said and how he said it firsthand.

 

[Titanio]

Nice link. Hearing directly about region encoding, it doesn't seem as black and white as I thought previously. Reporting on his comment suggested quite clearly that it would be the publisher's discretion on whether games are region free or not, but his comment was more subtle than that i.e. software will be region free, but publisher can choose whether to have a global sku or to split the box depending on the region. The latter wouldn't preclude it being region free, though..so I'm back to being confused on that

 

[expletive]

Nice link. Hearing directly about region encoding, it doesn't seem as black and white as I thought previously. Reporting on his comment suggested quite clearly that it would be the publisher's discretion on whether games are region free or not, but his comment was more subtle than that i.e. software will be region free, but publisher can choose whether to have a global sku or to split the box depending on the region. The latter wouldn't preclude it being region free, though..so I'm back to being confused on that

I always felt that there would need to be some control over this due to localization. Selling software in a country in which you havent localized the game would probably confuse gamers and generate lots of calls to support lines asking how theyre supposed to play the game in Japanese and their retailer wont take it back.

 

[Titanio]

I always felt that there would need to be some control over this due to localization. Selling software in a country in which you havent localized the game would probably confuse gamers and generate lots of calls to support lines asking how theyre supposed to play the game in Japanese and their retailer wont take it back.

I'm not sure if publishers would be allowed sell a non-localised version in a market (although this happens, for example, with Japanese games being sold in Korea, with Japanese only, no Korean).

It just didn't seem very clear to me if publishers would have the discretion to region-lock their software versus having seperate skus for different regions. The ability to do the latter doesn't necessarily allow them to region-lock. I'm guessing they do have that discretion, but it's not entirely clear from his comment.

 

[Sis]

Nice link. Hearing directly about region encoding, it doesn't seem as black and white as I thought previously. Reporting on his comment suggested quite clearly that it would be the publisher's discretion on whether games are region free or not, but his comment was more subtle than that i.e. software will be region free, but publisher can choose whether to have a global sku or to split the box depending on the region. The latter wouldn't preclude it being region free, though..so I'm back to being confused on that

I was confused by that comment as well. Isn't this basically the same as always? I know Halo 2 is region-free, so apparently MS already leaves it up to the publisher. I don't know of any PS2 games that are, but always assumed there were some.

 

[Titanio]

I was confused by that comment as well. Isn't this basically the same as always?

Probably, but his quote doesn't make that explicit. While a publisher can choose between regional or global SKUs, he wasn't clear if they'd have the discretion to region-lock. They are different things. "The concept is that software is region free" is kind of vague.