Nintendo Of Korea's eShop Will Offer Both Japanese And English Titles

Finally coming up with a solution to region locking. Maybe we will see some foreign games coming here?

i want it now!

@MarioMario agreed I don't mind playing a game in subtitles... I watch a movie/anime in subtittles if it is good enough to me...

eshop definitely makes importing more effiecient.. let's see

Hopefully, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3D isn't one of them

We need to be able to import JP games on the american e-shop ;_;

If it can be done there, it could be done everywhere else..

They got a lot of third party retail games! Why is that?

Well, that sounds great.

Wow a lot of retail downloads I hope they come out here and in Japan as well

they should have more points so you can buy anything

@Koto: That they need to size down a lot and resort to these kind of things in the first place?

I'm glad people in Korea can enjoy these games now .

@Koto No. No.

NOK's last game was Pushmo back in APRIL. Do you not realize how terrible they are?

I want Exclamation Warriors!

@TheDreamingHawk Pushmo was originally the only game on the Korean eShop. They don't even have a 3DS VC there, not even Super Mario Land or Bros.

I wish NoA made this much effort...

@TheDreamingHawk Pokemon Dream Radar just came out. Point still stands though.

This move makes me think Nintendo Korea will only translate games that people who don't know a second language would play (so young kids, I assume Koreans learn some English in school) and try and counter the fact lots of people play on imported systems (I'd imagine this to be the case). The population of Korea might not warrant translation (won't pay back costs due to few players etc).

@R-L-A-George You do realize NoA is releasing a lot more than NoK

man to bad we don't have all these games on the usa eshop

No offense, but most of the people in these comments sound pretty greedy.

I wish that NOA and NON would release these retail titles on our eShop and make our eShop english and Japanese

I'm glad NoK is addressing this issue and taking steps to solve the problems with game-access restrictions. I am so sick of region-locking - there has never been a need or consumer demand for it. Let people buy what they want to buy. If I want to buy a game in Japanese, then let me, I don't see what the issue is?

I have several games imported from Japan that are written in Japanese and I can play them easily. Japanese is a difficult language to learn, but I can understand the dialogue for the most part. Besides, some of the games don't need translating because the dialogue isn't necessary for gameplay, unlike RPGs which do need translating because you can only go so far in the game before you need to know what the dialogue is telling you to do or where to go or what character to get an item from, etc. But in this day with the Internet, you can easily find a guide online that will tell you what to do.

Which one will happen I wonder, import eShop being adopted in other regions, or me having to import a Japanese 3DS just to play games that may very well never reach North America.

Some statistics I compiled for those interested. I pulled this data off Wikipedia's list of 3DS games and practiced my arithmetic to determine the ratio of unreleased games between the different regions: Japan, USA, EU, AU (Korea was not listed). I hope this makes sense...

For Retail games, we have a total of 212 Retail games listed for 3DS.
Of that 212 retail games, the number of Unreleased Retail games are:
Japan = 58 or 27% = 3 out of 4 retail games are released in Japan
America = 35 or 17% = 5 out of 6 retail games are released in America
Europe = 41 or 19% = 4 out of 5 retail games are released in Europe
Australia = 42 or 20% = 4 out of 5 retail games are released in Australia

********** Best Region to live in for Retail games: America!!! **********

For eShop, we have a total of 121 eShop games listed.
The number of Unreleased eShop games are:
Japan = 33 or 27% = 3 out of 4 eshop games are released in Japan
America = 54 or 45% = 1 out of 2 eshop games are released in America
Europe = 76 or 63% = 1 out of 3 eshop games are released in Europe
Australia = 76 or 63% = 1 out of 3 eshop games are released in Australia

********** Best Region to live in for eShop games: Japan!!! **********

For Demos, there have been 17 downloadable demos released.
The number of demos each region received (Australia wasn't listed) are:
Japan = 5 or 29% = 1 out of 3 demos are released in Japan
America = 12 or 71% = 2 out of 3 demos are released in America
Europe = 16 or 94% = 9 out of 10 demos are released in Europe

********** Best Region to live in for Demos: Europe!!! **********

Some information we can derive from those statistics:

• America releases 3% more Retail games than Europe, but Europe releases 30% more Demos than America.
• America releases 15% more Retail games that Japan, but Japan releases 31% more eShop games. So in a way, America and Japan balance out: America releases more Retail games, but Japan makes up for the lack of Retail games by releasing more eShop games.

For Overall game releases PLUS DEMOs, we have a total of 350 games listed.
The number of Released games are:
Japan = 247 or 71% = 5 out of 7 games are released in Japan
America =256 or 73% = 3 out of 4 games are released in America
Europe = 232 or 66% = 2 out of 3 games are released in Europe
~ Demos not counted:
Australia = 215 or 65% = 2 out of 3 games are released in Australia

********** Best Region to live in for 3DS Owners: America!!! **********

@gundam00
great information, thanks a lot!

life told me, you can't always get what you want.
if korea is short on games its good for them, but I have to admit, I would love to have access to all the eshops around the world.

you know what really grinds my gears?
REGIONLOCK FOR RETAIL GAMES!

@LZBirdboi Yeah I do. XD

We just rarely get most of the Japanese games.

@gundam00 That makes sense, America does crank out some region only retail games of it's own. If people know english, perhaps they can import from america though we may not get some games as fast or at all.

@ #25: That's good to know. Thanks for the info.

@AceGrey @R-L-A-George @Urbanhispanic - You're welcome!! Thanks for the support! I added some information on what those statistics are telling us.

What stood out to me most with those statistics was that one region didn't dominate the 3DS market. I always thought Japan would dominate the 3DS market because that's where Nintendo is based. But actually Japan and America balance out on releases. With that said, I still think access to imported games should not be restricted with region-locking. I wanna play Gundam 3D! And since I actually prefer Japanese voice actors, I would rather have the Japanese dialogue left intact, of course translations wouldn't hurt. I just don't think I should have to import a Japanese 3DS to play a game, when my domestic 3DS is fully capable of playing the game.