I had thought about holding this for LNC, but I decided this was too big to wait...import retailer NCS has confirmed that Japanese Xbox games will not play on American consoles and vice-versa. This is contrary to statements issued by Microsoft during the Xbox's development, and comes as a bit of a surprise. Japanese controllers will work, and apparently so will the Japanese DVD playback kit (which will let the Xbox switch DVD regions a limited number of times, just like Windows) but it looks like if you're planning on playing any Japanese Xbox games, you'll have to wait for the now-necessary mod-chip. So why did they do it? It could be because of pressure from software publishers, many of whom have separate companies to sell their games in each territory, and are against the idea of competing with themselves. Another possibility (which has been used as a defense for territorial lockouts in the past) is that Microsoft is afraid of the rampant piracy in certain parts of Asia, and is doing everything they can to prevent those pirated games from being played elsewhere in the world. The question does arise now, however, as to what sort of lockout will be in the European and Australian versions of the systems when they are released later this year, and whether or not those games will be playable on other systems.