News is making way from Australia that the PlayStation 3 may ditch region-encoding alltogether, something handheld units like the Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP have been doing for years.

This essentially means gamers will no longer need mod-chips or slide cards to play imported games from other regions, such as that wacky salad-making simulator from Japan or Shadow of the Colossus from the US' much ahead launch. The idea was brought on by the merging of international TV standards as we enter the high-definition era. There will be a global standard for television, and Sony feels there should be one for their video games, as well.