Japanese XBOX 360 Day 1 - Region Locking

When you first turn on your Import Japanese XBOX 360 you’re greeted with a selection of many languages to choose from. I of course chose English and from there on out the setup was identical to that of the US XBOX 360. The first game I tried was Perfect Dark Zero. Unfortunately it seems to be region locked as the picture below indicates. After that I popped in Call of Duty 2 and had no problems jumping right into the game. Suprisingly the XBOX Live multiplayer worked perfectly as well and connected me with US 360 players right off the bat.

I’ve not heard anyone able to get Kameo or Project Gotham Racing 3 running on a J 360 so I’m guessing that games made by Microsoft Game Studios and games that Microsoft works on closely are subject to Region Locking all the time. Third party games though have zero region locking to speak of. Ufortunately my supplier didn’t send me the FFXI Beta so I can’t comment on that yet, but actually this might be a blessing as reports are that the game is extremely frustrating to setup and takes up a whopping 5GB of space on the Hard Drive.

The interface is nearly identical to the US 360 and I was pleasantly surprised to be able to access everything available in the US Marketplace like the Kameo and Madden demos. All in all so far it’s running great with no overheating problems to speak of. The power brick is still huge and the actual machine is still extremely loud just like its US counterpart.

Now we play the waiting game for titles like Wrestle Kingdom, DOA 4, Enchant Arm, and Nintey-Nine Nights, and for hackers to crack the region coding. I’ll be back tomorrow with more impressions.

More Pics Including Region Lock Warning