Regional Protection? (buying games in Asia)

I live in Asia right now, and I was looking to buy some games online from www.play-asia.com

However, a lot of their games either have US or Asia as their region. Does this really make a difference? I'll be back in America after a year or so, but I want to game now...so if I buy the Asian ones, can I still use those in America?

I've just never heard of games being region protected or anything. Please let me know!

 

i think only console games are regionally protected, some steam games might not work in different regions, not sure though.

 

I dont see why you wouldnt be able to play a game, that is installed on your computer, in another country.

 

PC users don't have to worry about where they bought their game so long as it's in the right language in almost all cases, I've got the UK version of the Witcher and the AU version of Overlord and I'm not living in either region yet both games work fine.

 

Usually the Asian versions may be in a different language regarding manuals and etc. And there's the whole PAL~NTSC thing, but I don't think that actually affects anything for PC games.

So go ahead and buy them. You'll be fine.

If I recall correctly, Tianxia's right about the Steam bit.

 

Sometimes different versions of online games only work in the given region, but in my experience that's only for MMOs. I have a laptop from the US and have used PC games bought in the UK, Japan, North America and Switzerland on it with no trouble.

Sometimes games don't have English, but for PC they work.

 

PC games aren't regions protected except some MMOs (especially Japanese editions, they restrict the access inside Japan because of the already very high ping caused by satellite internet).

PS3, PSP, GBA and NDS games aren't.
X360 are the publisher's discretion, Wii and PS2 are protected.

Asian version of console games are usually cheaper than the Japanese ones. The difference is that they most of the time come with an English manual. Games are also sometime in English, but with Japanese VAs (NOT the same translation as the North American one, usually)

PAL-NTSC doesn't matter if you're playing in 720p, 1080i or 1080p. I'm pretty sure the PS3 and X360 do the conversion for 480i and 480p too. The Wii, I don't know.

 

Your geographical location doesn't matter for console games so long as the machine you're using to play the games is of the right region. For example, I have an Asian region XBox 360 which still works fine despite the fact that I live in New Zealand at the moment though it only plays Asian region games.

As for PC games, I'm pretty sure that no non-MMO games have region protection. Even steam games should work between regions as I bought a legit copy of HL2 in China for NZ$15 which seems to still work no matter where I play it from. Hope this helps.

 

Yeah, I have Steam and I have bought games both in America and Taiwan (exchange) and I can pay and download them anywhere. In this specific case, initially you would not be able to buy a game if you are in a different region until you've contacted any steam representative and you mention your situation.