Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Walter Mitty]

The consoles are set to a specific region, but whether or not the games are is a different matter. MS has left it up to the publishers as to whether or not to region code their games. So far it seems that only Activision and Sega aren't putting region codes on their games.

Known region-free games (US versions):
Call Of Duty 2
Quake 4
Condemned
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
Gun
Amped 3 (not working on J-system)

All (6) of the Japanese launch titles are region-locked and will only play on a Japanese 360. Of the Japanese launch titles only two have English in the game - Ridge Racer 6 and Perfect Dark Zero.

As for DVD regions, they're set to whatever country the console is sold in. But the 360 can play retail region-free DVDs as well as burned DVD-R movies.

[mack the knife]

Are they already modding them over there?

[Walter Mitty]

Nope. No mods yet, though some people have figured out how to extract all the data from the game discs.

Some of those have shown up online, I assume to spread them around to give the modders a chance to study the file structure or something.

Even if they do come out with a chip, I doubt I'd get it. The new version of Live is too nice not to have it. It's pretty much an essential part of the system now.

[mack the knife]

You can't just switch off the chip? I'm confused. I thought Xbox live only booted you if you played with the chip in the "on" position or if you were using burned games.

[Metsuke]

You got to keep in mind that mods for the xbox went through many different evolutions... I would imagine the same thing will happen with the 360... even getting it to the point where you can mod the box and still have Live capabilities...

Thanks for the info Walter... I guess I'll stick with my original plan of getting a 360 in Canada...

[Walter Mitty]

Yeah, that's how the chips worked for the original Xbox. I never got on live with my Xbox, but did try it out a few times with friends' systems. It seemed okay, but with Live on the 360 they really improved the service. Being able to download game demos is great.

The user interface on the 360 is much, much better than on the original Xbox. The media functions are a nice addition, but they need to take it the rest of the way and allow users to stream music and videos from any computer (not just a Media Center PC). If they could do that, and add DivX support, I wouldn't need Xbox Media Center anymore.

[Metsuke]

[Walter Mitty]