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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."
$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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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
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.
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.