PS4 Will Not Be Region Locked, Microsoft Delays Xbox One Launch In Asia [E3 2013]
The excitement from last night’s Sony presentation has hardly died down today. There are still plenty of questions that need to be answered regarding the forthcoming console, but the company has been doing a pretty good job at keeping a steady stream of information coming, mostly coming from Shuhei Yoshida’s Twitter account.
Yoshida has been answering a variety of questions since last night, and so far, they’ve all been positive answers. One of the most surprising was the announcement that the PS4 will be region-free. That’s right, your console is going to work with games purchased in any country. That’s a big change from consoles of the past.
Out of curiosity, let’s check in with Microsoft and see if they might be able to keep pace with this good news. Actually, they just announced that not only is the console region-locked (which is normal for consoles), but the Xbox One won’t actually be launching in the Asian market until “late 2014.” Normally, this would be sad to hear, but when timed against Sony’s recent announcement, it just looks even worse.
Another nice tidbit from the Sony group is that your 500GB PS4 hard drive will be upgradeable, just as with the PS3. No need to buy expensive proprietary hard drives, if you want something bigger. Yoshida also confirmed that you would not need a PS+ subscription for services like Netflix and Hulu, though you would need it for online multiplayer. Though these seemed implied from last night’s presentation.
