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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."
Can't find Xbox 360s in the UK? You can't be looking very hard, as far as I know there's no shortage of Xbox 360s in the UK, hasn't been for months. I live in a smallish town, and my local ASDA and Blockbusters both have consoles, and I think Woolworths and Argos probably have them as well.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
Regular DVD players aren't region-free just because there exist DVDs suitable for all regions, right?
There are still people with non-multimode televisions?
My TV is 3 years old, but it does NTSC and PAL bot flawlessly.
No console released after the SNES had more than one controller, nor has any console after the SNES had a pack-in game at launch. Only one controller is the industry standard nowadays, and giving us a game with the thing is more generous than Sony or Microsoft have ever been. Remember that Sony is charging $600 for their console, which will no doubt only have one controller.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Traditionally, region encoding was implemented because sometimes a developer would use different publishers for different regions.
Not so common anymore.
I thought the GameCube controller can also be used? I've got about three of those.
So just because it only comes with one Wiimote control set (paddle plus wand), you should still be able to play Animal Crossing until the new one comes out.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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 would have to call BS on this one. Just because blu-ray video discs will be region encoded doesn't mean all games will have that "feature" in case Sony doesn't want it. Also they can probably just ignore the region encoding bit aswell if it really is there on all discs. The PS3 will be region free for games.