Region Locks, and Making Bank

As some of you may or may not know, Diablo III will be region locked.  What this means is that each region will have its own auction house.  It also means that different copies of the game will be sold.

What does this mean to you?  Well, if you live in Russia, you will probably have your own region.  Similar to those in Europe, China, Oceanic (Aus, NZ, Indo etc), North America and South America.

But what can we do to profit from this?

For those who are familiar with World of Warcraft, if you buy your game in North America, your game copy ships with the north American based battle.net servers.  If you wanted to play on a European server, you had to find a European copy of the game.  Now some might think, well, I'll just play on the NA servers and make my money there, but you would be missing a huge market.

Allow me to draw your attention to the Mean Disposable Household Income index.  This essentially indicates the top nations for disposable income, and theoretically, those who will spend on goods.

The top ten list is as follows (equalized)

1. United States (NA)
2. Canada (NA)
3. Switzerland (EU)
4. United Kingdom (EU)
5. Norway (EU)
6. Austria (EU)
7. Germany (EU)
8. Denmark (EU)
9. Netherlands (EU)
10. Sweden (EU)

While not an exact science, my point is, if you're playing the game, and are accumulating a lot of $$, don't forget about the €€ servers and vice versa.