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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.
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.
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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.
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?
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
What a run around Microsoft - I bet there are chairs flying today.
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
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.
There are still people with non-multimode televisions?
My TV is 3 years old, but it does NTSC and PAL bot flawlessly.
Just bring protection and you'll be fine.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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.
Well lets think about this.
Which do you think is fairer?
#1 Opera is default and everyone effectively pays for it?
#2 Opera is cheaply available to those who will use it (based on game prices say 5$-10$) and the console was effectively CHEAPER because of this.
Personally I'd rather the option to pay for what I use, instead of paying for others to have something i might never use.
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.
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.