Japanese Eternal Sonata demo works in U.S.

by Richard Mitchell { May 14th 2007 at 10:30AM }

Find yourself hankering for a whimsical, musical adventure? If so, we hope you didn't delete all those incredibly legitimate foreign Xbox Live accounts from your beloved 360. You see, a demo for Trusty Bell (Eternal Sonata in the States) has landed on the Japanese Marketplace. Now, considering Microsoft's recent crackdown (no, not that Crackdown) on foreign content downloading, this shouldn't really be big news. That's all well and good, but it turns out that the demo works just fine on U.S. consoles. Even better, it features full English dialogue and menus.

Why does it work? Why isn't it blocked by Microsoft's newfangled security measures? Our guess is that the security measures are mostly a one-way affair. In other words, they are for keeping U.S. content in, and not for keeping non-U.S. content out. Whatever the reason is, we suggest all of our RPG-starved readers get to downloading.

Any luck downloading this for our European friends?

[Via Joystiq]

Tags: bandai namco, BandaiNamco, chopin's dream, Chopin'sDream, chopins dream, ChopinsDream, eternal sonata, EternalSonata, namco bandai, NamcoBandai, trusty bell chopin's dream, trusty bell chopins dream, TrustyBellChopin'sDream, TrustyBellChopinsDream

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Chuck @ May 14th 2007 10:58AM

How does one go about making a Japanese Live account? I'd love to download this early...

Galacktus @ May 14th 2007 11:24AM

Hello

Im from Spain

This demo works perfectly in my european (PAL) Xbox 360

bye

ROSENRKIEGER @ May 14th 2007 11:52AM

MS is not yet enforcing the new policy!

Download of GoW Maps still works fine, with a US Account on a German based machine.

BlackSite Demo does the same ( eventhough its not supposed to be downloadable from Germany )

So - no wonder this download will work just fine. The policies aren't being enforced YET.

Mikeawesome @ May 14th 2007 1:05PM

Oh lordy.

I just spent an hour playing through that demo (one and a half times, the half time is from when I accidentally went back to the menu). In short, the game is beautiful, I love the combat system, and I'm seriously pumped for it's release. It makes me wonder, though, how it's gotten such generally lackluster previews so far. Is there something later along in the game that makes the game suck? Because, as far as I can see, the gameplay would remain interesting and fun so long as you don't burn yourself out on the title.

James @ May 14th 2007 1:06PM

Is there any way to offload a demo like this onto an external storage device (e.g. hard drive)? If so, could somebody copy the demo off, zip it up, and share it on the internet e.g. via P2P? It's probably a grey area licensing-wise, but I can't imagine MS bothering their legal team with C&D notices over a free demo...

I'd *really* like to get my hands on this...

nerrrrrd @ May 14th 2007 2:19PM

James, I believe the demo itself is signed to the 360 it was downloaded too. So it would be technically possible to 'back up the demo' on a disk but the only 360 that could play it would be the original 360.

uzi @ May 14th 2007 9:11PM

well i own a NTSC/J set
but i cant get the English menus
seems like you'll only get the English menus on NTSC/U consoles :(

Elbone @ May 14th 2007 10:33PM

How can I get this? I'm in the U.S.

Tom @ May 15th 2007 1:20AM

Thanks for the info! I finally signed up for a Japanese account today after several months of not caring enough about Japanese games to bother. Downloading the demo now! Woohoo!

@Elbone, just sign up for a new silver account saying you're from japan. You gotta use a different email address. Only place where you might get stuck is the Japanese postal code, but just enter in "4314121" and the rest will fill in automatically.