Hey everyone, DK here to chat about the, uh, “healthy discussion” going on regarding a few tidbits from EpicBattleCry Skirmish 060. For those that haven’t see the show (WTF?!), here’s the deal…

Our Member BattleCry of the Week came from TalonoftheSilverHawk who, in a nutshell, was rather unpleased with SCEE for not brining Atlus’ Demon’s Souls, one of the best PS3 RPGs in recent memory, to his neck of the woods over in the UK. We gave Talon the platform to raise the issue which was “Please don’t withhold such a great game from me by not making it available in my region.”

Next up was Tony’s BattleCry, which went out to region locking on consoles. He pointed out that most handhelds and some consoles are not locked, but that there’s really no point to any of it in the first place no matter what the console was. Because we failed to separate the two topics and transition between them (easy to see how we slipped up now that we look back), there was some confusion about what Tony was saying…and rightly so. The good news? The topic has spawned a great discussion on the matter over in the EBA forums which you can access here. In it, Viking Brent points out exactly what went down:

“We really should have clarified this point in the show but we were running long and trying to finish up. The PS3 console and games are region-free (with a few possible exceptions, I’ve read somewhere that Stranglehold and a few others are region locked). But (and its a big but) if you’re not using HDMI there’s still the NTSC vs. PAL problem, some games region lock online play, and the biggest problem is that DLC is usually region locked. So if you have a U.S. copy of the game you probably won’t be able to play online or download new content if you’re on a European PSN account.”

Yeah, so, to clarify we were trying to point out the pointlessness of region locking of any kind…We didn’t mean to specifically say that Demon’s Souls as a game was region locked. Sorry if it came across that way. Many fans and fellow gamers have stepped up to suggest that importing the game is a good alternative, which is an excellent point.

Anyway, here’s the BEST part of all of this…The ‘Axe is all about generating informative, entertaining discussion and breaking down the barriers that face gamers today. For Talon, the issue of not having access to Demon’s Souls within his region still exists, no matter how much we talk the subject into the ground. So, it’s OUR TURN to step up and EpicBattleAxe.com is gonna send him a copy of the game from here in the U.S.! What better way to celebrate the insightful discussion going on about this topic than to see his desire to play Demon’s Souls come true. We’ve reached out to Talon and will keep you posted on this touching story of Demons, Hawks, Locks, and Love.

Thanks as always for checking out the show and again, feel free to chime in on the topic in the EBA forums right here or in the comments section below!

Cheers,
DK