Regional lockout is the programming practice, code, chip, or physical barrier used to prevent the playing of media designed for a device from the country where it is marketed on the version of the same device marketed in another country.

This means that most DVDs, Blu-Rays and video games are coded so they only work in the region where they were released.

VIDEO GAMES

In the video game industry, Nintendo was the originator of regional lockout. Regional lockout in video games is when a piece of hardware is designed such that only software for that region is compatible. Most video games have region encoding.

The main regions are:

Most of Nintendo's handheld systems do not have regional lockout; because of this, import games can be played on those systems. In other words, a Japanese game would work on an Australian unit, although the game would likely not be in the user's native language and might be different from the product as released in other countries.

The immediate successor to the Nintendo DS, the Nintendo DSi, is region-locked. However older DS games will play on it regardless of region of origin.

The PSP has no region locking for UMD games, except for a single title: BattleZone. However, UMD movies are locked by region.

The PlayStation 3 has no region coding on it's games, so games from anywhere in the world will work on any system. However most Blu-Ray movies, which can be viewed on the PlayStation 3 console, are region locked, and can only be used by the same regional code.

The Nintendo Wii console has regional coding, so you can only purchase games with the same region code as the console.

The Xbox 360 also has regional coding, although some games have been released with no regional locks.

So What Does This All Mean?

Basically if you buy a console in Australia, it will have the PAL coding, and only games that have PAL coding will work in it. You can find what region the game is from on the back cover. There's a little symbol, usually at the bottom.

There are exceptions though.

PlayStation 3 - Games are not region locked.

Nintendo DS - Games are not region locked

Sony PSP - Games are not region locked.

Hope this helps.

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