Nintendo did that first. Not just with the Super Nintendo, but the original NES vs. the Famicom.

There was kinda-sorta a justifiable reason for that in the sense that different countries at that time had different television standards with frame rates and vertical line counts which the systems of the era were inherently tied to, and sticking an NTSC game in a PAL system or vise-versa even if it fit and would play would not produce an optimal result. (Sometimes it still didn't — ask people about the Street Fighter games in PAL regions, for instance.)

Now that the world is all on the same digital TV standards, region locking can be done in software.