Nintendo has officially announced that it would change how the ESRB rating is displayed for first-party titles in SEA territories. Starting with “Another Code: Recollection” the ESRB rating will no longer be displayed and the barcode will change to match with NCL. However, the MSE region mark (MENA/SEA Official Product) will be retained and the game paks will be shipped with MSE (Middle (GCC territories) + SEA) cards instead of USA cards. THE BIG EXCEPTION is that games that are rated 18+ will be shipped with an IMDA 18+ SG rating. Not sure if it will apply to the ME region (since services may transfer to NOE, or would remain with NOA/NCL, however Bahrain and Qatar still use PEGI).
by DISNEYNICKFAN2004
6 Comments
However, has anyone heard if these changes will apply to games sold in the Gulf (sans KSA/UAE)?
Maybe this has something to do with resellers importing and listing MSE titles as NTSC and severely undercutting the market. I admit I’ve purchased a few MSE games unknowingly because of the ESRB rating on the front.
I don’t understand; what does this mean? I live in Qatar, btw.
holy fuck it must be so bad to be an european and have to own those covers
I don’t care as much about the ESRB rating removal but if they’re replacing the USA carts with carts from another issue, that kinda screws us since the majority of Switch owners in SEA use US accounts. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if the region locking for DLC wasn’t a thing.
This screws me up a lot since all of my purchases are tied to my US account and I can no longer freely change my region because I made the big mistake of tying a child account to mine.
headline: “nintendo breaking away from esrb ratings in southeast asia”
cover photo: a german boxart with a USK rating
???