In a Q&A session following the platform keynote address at GDC 2006 this morning, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Phil Harrison confirmed what was heavily demanded for import gamers all over the world, and yet previously thought unthinkable for a major corporation: the PS3 will be region-free for gaming.

The move was not unexpected, as SCE had previously mentioned considering the possibility of opening up the region structure for PS3 software (the newly-released PSP system doesn't use a region code for games already, but that's more of a standard for portable titles than a new development). This system is, amongst other things, hoped to combat piracy -- many import fans "chip" their consoles with region-free mods to play import games, and while that desire has some legitimacy, it also opens the doors for pirates to release illegal copies of games. (Funnily enough, it's most often easier to run illegal games on a console than it is to run legit games from other countries due to the way most mod chips work, leading to a slippery slope for importers hoping to stay legit but finding the road difficult to maneuver.) Region-free gaming also allows publishers to release titles across the globe simultaneously, either through e-distribution or on disc. The capacity of Blu-Ray had previously been mentioned to allow for multiple languages of a game to be encoded onto the same massive-capacity disc.The one caveat of this new region-free structure is that games made for specific regions' electrical and TV standards may have problems on your TV set. A PAL PS3 game, for instance, will have difficulty running on an NTSC TV, unless the developers have thought ahead and planned for that issue. It is currently unknown how the PS3 will cope with this problem (whether there will be a warning when you run an import about possible TV incompatibility, or if there might be a no-play screen for incompatible games depending on your PS3's TV settings.) Luckily, modern HDTV standards go a long way towards making that problem moot. Also, games made in other countries will naturally only have the text and dialog it is programmed with -- so don't pre-order all of those Japanese RPGs and Dragon Ball Z games too fast if you don't know a lick of kanji (English will only be in if the developers have planned for it, though it's unknown if there will be any type of "patching" system for multi-language releases, although that might be possible on supported games post-release now that the PS3 is carrying its massive HDD and flash memory support.)We'll have more details on how this impacts publishers and importers as soon as we know more about SCE's plans for region-free PS3 gaming.