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No difference whatsoever... however there is a little quirk. I mention it at the end of the post.
However, I'd wait just a bit longer (about 2 or 3 months) as Sony is planning to implement a new, longer-life battery to the PSP.
EDIT:
| quote: | Originally posted by IGN
Lock-Out Knocked Off
A Japanese PSP, a US game ... we've put the two together and put region-coding fears to rest.
by Nix
March 5, 2005 - Is it or isn't it?
Now that Friends is off the air, the biggest cliffhanger of the season has been over whether or not the PlayStation Portable is a region-free system. The PSP was first announced to have full region protection available on all of its UMD formats (Music, Video, and Game), but executives and representatives from Sony have since said in various forums (including the first mention right here on IGN) that the region system would not be turned on for videogame releases. The fear struck back, however, when the initial Japanese PSP games released with a DVD-style region markings on the package. Would Japanese and North American systems, as Sony initially led us to believe, still be able to get along and play each other's import games?
While absolutely definitive proof that PSPs games are open for games of all regions to play will have to wait until US-edition PSP systems are available, we can finally confirm that US games play just fine on Japanese PSPs. We received our first retail copy of a US game -- EA's Need For Speed Underground: Rivals, which we will have further coverage of next week -- and found that it played just fine on the PSP we picked up months ago in Akihabara, Japan. Aside from having to know that Japanese game systems use the circle button to make menu choices instead of the westernized X (which was no longer an issue once we were in the game, as it's only global menus that have this import quirk), there was no evidence when we jumped into the game that our system was bought in Japan instead of in America.
It is still unknown how region systems will work with any of the forthcoming UMD Video releases (although, considering these are the DVD people we're dealing with here instead of Sony, chances are the locks are locked up as expected.) Importers should be aware that, as with any other game system, you should not expect import and domestic versions of games to link multiplayer together -- the systems should connect just fine, but because the US and JPN editions have a different code base because of all the language and tweaks and other edits that go on when localizing a title, the two versions are technically two different games. (We have already tested the US and Japanese editions of Lumines, and unfortunately, they won't link together -- on the other hand, our version eliminates the slowdown and in-game loading that disrupted the Japanese game's rave, so it's a fair fix.)
We'll be putting more discs to the test on PSPs from different regions as the games and systems come in, but as it stands now, the locks are unlocked for import fans to get their game on. |
http://psp.ign.com/articles/593/593861p1.html
There you are. If you plan to use it for multiplayer, though, then you're out of luck if your chums have the NA version of the game.
Last edited by Yan on Mar-06-2005 at 03:53
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