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Wii to be Region Free
Chris Kohler is making it a point to single out the fact that, like its cousin the DS, the Wii is to be Region-free. They also discuss how Virtual Console titles will associated with a console owner, and some details on the Opera browser. From the article: "Like the Nintendo DS, the Wii will be able to play games from other regions, such as Japan, without any restriction. Kaplan implied there might be a region lock that publishers would be able to flip on, but it doesn't sound like the first-party titles from Nintendo will be restricted."
I love Japanese games. I'm sooooo happy their making it region-fwii!
-FL
$250 and region free? Sounds like a winner to me.
...and call me cynical, but if it's a case like the Xbox 360, where it can be region free, but only if the publisher wants it, I'd still get a US system (I'm in the UK), just becuase I know some game I want to play will be region locked, and won't be released in the UK.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
but should hopefully mean we won't see what we did with the 360 - I can't buy one in the UK and have to look at pictures of crates unsold in Japan. :) I think I'm going to buy myself one now.
Might also avoid the UK getting shafted on hardware costs
Sooo, over to you Sony - how are you going to convince me to buy a PS3 when I've got my PC, my 360 and now a Wii?
is there any reason to make something that isn't region free? I mean, it would seem that sales would increase if they weren't restricted to a region.
34486853790
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I'd hate to go to China and try to play with my Wii and discover that it was disabled until I returned home.
Beep beep.
This is very good because as far as I can tell from following the Japanese press conference last night and then the American press conference this morning, the Japanese lineup of launch games is going to be way better than the American!
(Has it even been announced yet whether "Wii Play", the game with duck hunt and pong in it, is coming in America at all? That was probably the most interesting piece of information last night, and I don't think the American coverage even mentioned it.)
Kaplan implied there might be a region lock that publishers would be able to flip on, but it doesn't sound like the first-party titles from Nintendo will be restricted."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this like telling people they can stop smoking by transitioning to smokeable nicotine sticks? If a developer can arbitrarily flip on region restrictions (which are, of course, keyed to region codes that *are* sold on this "region-free" device), then anyone who wants to restrict regions can. And before you pop a blood vessel, I think it's great that first party games will be like this, and I'm definitely getting a Wii, but this victory seems a tad hollow. I just don't think it's going to lead to "omg! I can get the Japan-only release and play it on my regular system!"
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Regular DVD players aren't region-free just because there exist DVDs suitable for all regions, right?
I picked up the cube while I was living in Japan and a few games, but I will almost certainly get a North American Wii. I wonder if I will be able to play my Japanese gamecube games on it.
Also, are they doing a universal power supply? I do a lot of traveling and it would be cool if all I needed was a prong adaptor.
Monstar L
Nintendo often plays nice with hardware costs anyway - e.g. Gamecube was £150, which was a lot closer to the true exchange rate than the 1 dollar=1 pound that most companies tend to use. Sadly it doesn't extend to games, which is what I'll be spending most of my cash on even if the console costs £300 over here. :(
We used to have Woolworths in the town I grew up it. It was a great store. Every summer they had a model building contest for the kids and displayed the models in the store window! I thought they went out of business a long time ago. All the stores around here are long gone.
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What a run around Microsoft - I bet there are chairs flying today.
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Does it work with both NTSC and PAL hardware?
It's all well and good not imposing arbitrary restrictions on the playing of software, but if it's not actually physically compatible with certain televisions, then that could present some problems.
I don't know about you, but now that we know the release date, I'm planning on buying one the first weekend they come out.
FPS and Sports might be nice for some, but I find them ultra-boring. Probably because both were so much a part of my life, having spent so many years in the Army and playing sports since I was a kid.
Game consoles are so you can get away from what you know.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When a Japanese game company releases a game, though, and doesn't plan on releasing an English version, do you think they'll turn on the region coding to deliberately shut out any potential import market, or they'll leave it off in the hopes of attracting a few extra buyers from overseas? Giving the option for region coding is likely for the companies with separate divisions - so that, say, Sega of America doesn't have to feel like they're competing with Sega of Japan on the same game. I'm guessing that for the most companies who do use the region coding, they'll probably be releasing a version in your area sooner or later anyway, so the lack of ability to import probably won't hurt as much, wihle smaller single-division companies will have a little more opportunity to pick up a niche audience.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Yesterday and today's announcements make me want the Wii less and less. I thought they would be including Opera for "free". Hopefully it's at least cheap.
I have to wonder if that wasn't part of Nintendo's decision to allow for region-free coding - that they realized that region coding ain't stopping anybody from pirating games to begin with...
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
This is cool, as it makes importing that much better. It looks like Nintendo has realized that while there may not be mass-market appeal of a "crazy" game in the states, there is enough interest to import the title. Rather than have their users mod the hardware and be forced to buy another unit, they give them the chance to import what they like.
This also removes just about any excuse for the installation of modchips (which tend to be viewed as always allowing play for "backup" games, but also have modchips that serve just to turn off region locking), so it will be much harder for anyone hocking a Wii modchip to justify such a thing.
This will also be a boon for publishers in Japan, as they can let their games be region free and see what the import demand is; if it looks like a good number of people are picking it up, it's more likely to get a regular localization.
Alternatively, more companies might develop games in multiple languages. Popular Japanese games that only trickle into the states can get English subtitles, and vice versa.
But does the Wii allow you to select a default language? That would be helpful for the games, as they could default to display/playing in one language unless the user chooses something else.
I'd have to say that this is a good move. Didn't Sony go "Region Free" for the PS3, as well?
Maybe we can import a few consoles from you Americans then, huh? I hope you don't mind. The thing is, if Nintendo is up to its usual shenanigans, it'll be february 07 until we get any Wii love over here. So I'll probably import one or two for me and my pals.
The Wii is looking better and better :-)
The new slogan:
"Everybody WIIs"
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Regular DVD players aren't region-free just because there exist DVDs suitable for all regions
Well said.
You can't take the sky from me...
I study Japanese, and I have been to the point where I can enjoy playing text-heavy Japanese games, but I am limited to Japanese ROMs on my computer at this point. Not that I don't mind ROMs (There are lots of really good classic games), but sometimes I want to play the Japanese version of a game before it comes out in English because (1) I can play it before everyone else and (2) I can write it off as "language study." The only problem with this is the whole region-setting for consoles, which I can only bypass by modding my console, which is a mess I don't want to get into. The fact that the Wii is region free might have sealed the deal with me (Provided I play the Wii and it's not total crap). Nintendo did something else right, yay.
I hear a Commercial jungle in the making.... *Boom*Cha*Boom*Boom* ....
New Nintendo Wii,
cost dolla' 250
games region free
sounds like a winner to me
*Boom*Cha*Boom*Boom*
How much cooler
could it be?.....
Even comes with a pretty..
Pink Pony!
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
What the summary forgot to mention was a confirmation of the prices for additional controllers:
$40 for additional Wii Remotes and $20 for additional Wii Nunchucks
Well, thats not really cheap, especially the Remote+Nunchuck Combo, but about what I expected. It will be quite expensive to buy the full set for four players, I guess...
I thought it stretched into the GB, or GBA days when Nintendo was fully region free, and the only barriers were language and display? Or, this is the handheld experiment that finally bore fruit?
Oh, and I forgot, the Wii discs are normal size.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiidge raaaacer and real-time weapon change.
its been ruled by the courts here in australia that selling any hardware (dvd player, gaming console, ect) is anti-competetive (and therefore illegal) and that australians have the right to buy dvds ect at the best price they can find them, including from overseas sources. these same courts ruled it legal to mod-chip playstations, though doing so would void your waranty. the company i work for purchases dvds and cds wholesale from overseas for retailing, and from the number of complaints i see with customers complaining that their systems wont play the movies/music, i dont think the hardware companies are paying to much attention anyway. but then, we're all criminals down here anyway, its in the blood.
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When DVD players leave the factory they are technically region free, you get to swap DVDs of different regions 5 times, on the 5th swap the region code of the player gets locked to that of the last disc's region code number. Of course there are hacks out there to make numerous DVD players truely region free.
I might be the only person to have ever done this, but I might have to import American games to Japan. I live in Japan but I can't read almost any Japanese and I only speak a little bit. Granted, I could round up a Japanese friend to help me, but I might just have to have someone in America send me games for the Wii I will buy here in Japan.
It's nice to see this trend. I was pleased to see import PSP games at Fry's and apparently HD-DVD is region free too (Blu-Ray at least puts NA and Japan in the same region).
I used to work at SCEE as a dev back at around PS2 launch and asked the same question of some sales/marketing people I knew (although you should never trust anything said by sales/marketing! ;) ). The answer I was given was roughly the following:
Sony etc work primarily as regional buisnesses, and region encoding allows different regions to have their own pricing policy. Different regions balance the loss taken on console sales against the profit made on games sales differently (for example regions with rampant piracy won't take any loss on a console sale, but "normal" regions like the UK often subsidise console sales to the tune of £100).
Also different regions have different marketing costs and needs; a big advertising spend in the UK needs to be recouped from sales in the UK. Finally there are sometimes laws that differ from region to region (think of certain symbols in Germany etc.) and region locking can help produce a product that complies with the different laws while allowing any extra costs from compliance to be targetted at the appropriate market.
Disclaimer: I am not saying any of these are actually sensible ways to handle the issues and this is 6 year old info.
clever :-)
The article title is just begging for a bad pick-up line.
"Hey baby, my Wii is region free; you can use it anywhere"
"My Wii's good all over the world honey."
"It's o.k. baby, my Wii is region free now. I got that cleared up last week"
Ok, I'm really a bit lost. This seems to directly conflict with an article stating that Wii titles are to be region-encoded.