Board Thread:Decisions/@comment-1465604-20151111093405

They have already lead to a few confused Wikia users in the JD2016 thread alone, like that one guy who stated he's in Japan (NTSC), yet he had the "PAL-exclusives".

Background:

Decades ago, when home console games started being produced, the console makers adopted a certain region scheme: NTSC-J for Japan, NTSC-U for USA, PAL for Europe and Australia (games just weren't released in Africa and I think games weren't released in South America 'til late in the game and then they just got the NTSC-U games). The scheme kind of mirrored the region scheme for TV signals, even if it didn't follow them to 100% (certain parts of Europe does not use PAL, for example).

Fast forward to the 7th generation of videogame consoles and the terms PAL and NTSC (-J, -U) became misnomers, but due to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft living by the motto of "The customers are idiots", they decided not to do away with them, presumably for fear of alienating customers who were too used to the three regions. Why were they misnomers? Because the PS3 and Xbox 360 sent out digital signals (unless you used cables for them to translate their signals into analogue signals) and digital video does not use the PAL/NTSC/SECAM (Google it!) scheme. All digital video is region-free. The Wii was still analogue at heart, so the PAL/NTSC/SECAM scheme applied to it, but it didn't for the 360 or PS3.

Fast forward to the 8th generation of home consoles and even the console makers have entirely dropped the terms PAL and NTSC from their vocabularies. You will not find those terms anywhere on any of the packaging of any of their consoles or games, so the terms PAL and NTSC do not apply, in any way, to the 8th generation of consoles.

But that's not the real reason why we should do away with the terms "PAL" and "NTSC" for the purposes of Just Dance. The main reason is because when it comes to Just Dance, Ubisoft does not separate the world into PAL and NTSC but into the U.S. and The Rest of the World when it comes to region-locked content.

Let's take a look at, say, "The World is Ours". It was released for every single country in the world... except for the U.S. As such, it was not a PAL exclusive, seeing as how Japan (NTSC-J) and  South America (which is split on the usage of NTSC and PAL on a West Coast vs. East Coast basis) got it. The only country that didn't get "The World is Ours" was the U.S.

The same is true for all region-locked content for Just Dance as far as I know. So I say: Let's get rid of these outdated misnomers that don't actually serve any real purpose but to confuse people. The Just Dance main series has 2 regions, the U.S. and Worldwide (I think we should go with "Worldwide" over "The Rest of the World" because it's shorter and also makes more sense when standing alone. Or, if we want to be even clearer, yet still concise, we could go with "Outside the U.S."). I say we start usings those 2 terms on this Wikia instead of the terms "PAL" and "NTSC".

I've personally seen some people having to say stuff like "I have the Stadium Flow flow mashup, but I'm on NTSC. I'm in Japan, though" or just being confused over he fact that they have songs they shouldn't have based on their region. Why perpetuate that confusion?

There's no real benefit to keep the terms PAL and NTSC in use on the Wikia as far as I can see. And if we use the terms "U.S." and "Outside the U.S.", no confusion is possible. Who's with me? It'll take a lot of work, but we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. 