Slashdot Mirror
Wii Now Confirmed to Not be Region-Free
legoburner writes "Contrary to an earlier Slashdot story, Nintendo have now stated that the Wii will not be region free. The original claim came from Nintendo America, but Nintendo UK have gone on record denying the claims. They put it rather bluntly, stating: 'We are region-locked,' and that Nintendo America made a mistake by claiming otherwise."
This isn't suprising, most systems are region locked as it is. Besides I'm sure someone will make a region-lock bypass similar to Gameshark or something.
When expecting to find intelligence in a person, do not look at their age but instead look at their IQ and maturity firs
I'm waiting for the word from Nintendo of Japan before I believe anything.
Is it that hard? The dollar/pound/euro/yen is the only voice they'll hear.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
You know, the main problem that I have with Nintendo locking regions is that I travel quite a bit. Why shouldn't I be able to pick up a game that I come across while I am in Europe, or wherever else? It just makes it less convenient.
Or if I end up moving to another country for work for a while... should I have to have relatives purchase the games for me and ship them over whenever I need a new one? C'mon.
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If it is locked - and I don't really know what the overall conclusion from this article is either - then it's certainly bad news for the UK gamers. Seems that the announced prices for the Wii will make it most expensive in the UK - for reasons that aren't clear to me for one.
I suspect the reason is the same one as used by every other company - "you're British, if we shaft you on price you won't do anything about it. It's just cos we can charge more that we do."
By your sig's logic you can give me credit for preventing an asteroid attack on the planet. My anti-asteroid device has been working perfectly -- no attacks yet! Credit where credit's due please.
Dont get me wrong, I am not anti Nintendo, I am as Nintendo neutral as anyone can be. But I can see the history. Nintendo has a long history of stumbling over their own arrogance.
This time it seems the rule not the exception. They had everything right, the momentum was there after E3, everyone loved the console, which ought to be not the latest in technology bug cheaper than the rest and with a new controller enabling good gaming ideas.
And now... Scam pricing to ripp off different regions: Hint at Nintendo, even 250 USD is not 250 Euros, even with the VAT calculated out the thing still is more expensive than the US version.
Enforced bundles so they can hike prices in certain areas: Hint at nintendo, an enforced Wii sports bundle does not help sales, it would have been better to sell the console for 200 and let the people decide which game to buy, in the end you will lose money on that decision.
Hidden costs: Hint at Nintendo: charging another 60 dollars for another controller set pushes you way over the XBOX360 pricewise.
Dropped features: No dvd, while not being really important anymore, they could at least have offered dvd as buyable option instead of leaving it out entirely.
Region Codes: While this was heavily promoted, region codes suck, europeans hate them, some americans as well, go for it Nintendo. You just give certain people a legal justification for selling modchips.
I have yet to see a single company pissing so many people off in such a short period of time, the discussions in the forums, basically have all the same tone (wtf did you think nintndo i do not want the f*** wee sports just for price hiking) like Nintendo has last week, they had everything in place. Ship the console for 200 Euros no bundle, plain, no discussion lots of sales. They have the DS momentum on their side. Now if Microsoft just drops their prices 50 europs over here, Nintendo lies flat and dead in its starting position and ends up with a Cube like fiasko.
Imagine you were Nintendo, and not sure about how region locking actually affects sales because there is no hard data on that. Would you consider collecting the data yourself? As in, have two lackeys make contradictory announcements, and watch the customer responses?
No, because the people who have a propensity to respond to such announcements likely do not accurately represent the whole set of people who are interested in buying the product. A) they are much more tech savvy and care about all these day-to-day announcements (as opposed to the person who just tries to buy it once it's out, or pre-orders it and forgets all else). B) people who respond tend to be those people who oppose whatever it is they are responding to, whereas people who don't care one way or the other tend not to respond. And I'm sure there's other reasons why. In any case, any "data" they might collect would be pretty much worthless in terms of determining the market effect of their decision, whatever that decision turns out to be.
I don't know where you live, but in the United States, the vast majority of DVD players are region locked, and most people don't know or care.
The only people who have region-free players are people who've hacked them (some models had override codes you could put in) or who bought them overseas.
Most people go down to Wal-Mart, plunk down their $30, and buy whatever's on the end of the aisle, on sale. They barely stop to look at the name of the brand, much less anything so esoteric as region coding.
This will have a greater affect on people in Europe than in the U.S.; people here just don't care enough about imported content (with the exception of people who are into stuff from Japan) to notice region coding. Most Americans don't travel (and thus wouldn't come into possession of a foreign-region disc), don't speak any other languages (and so most foreign content is useless to them), and have enough domestic content available that they're not dying to get their hands on stuff from abroad.
The very small percentage of people who care about having a region-free DVD player or game console will pay the price premium necessary to acquire one on the grey market. With DVD players this usually means getting one originally destined for Europe or Asia, and with game consoles this means installing a mod chip. I don't think the Nintendo Rev--excuse me, Wii--will be any different in this regard. The very small number of gamers who want to play Japanese import games will get a mod chip.
The biggest effect that the region coding will have in the United States is that it creates a semi-legitimate excuse for mod chips to exist. If there wasn't region coding, and thus the excuse of wanting to be able to override the console's programming and play foreign games, then mod chips would be viewed more as a purely piracy-oriented tool; as it is, it's pretty easy to market them (with a hefty wink-wink-nudge-nude, know what I mean).
As someone who's never bought an un-modded console, I'd like to take a moment to thank Nintendo for this development. The modchip manufacturers and blank-DVD producers of the world salute you.
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I have little doubt that the Wii will be region-unlocked (mod chip, anyone?) and running Linux within the first month of its release.
So it looks like the PC is coming out ahead in this console generation. I think I'll just shell out 150-200 bucks for a vid card upgrade instead and wait the extra month for the X-Box games to make it to PC. All the good Wii games are gonna be on Gamecube anyway (Well Zelda, that's the only one that really matters) and I have yet to see a PS3 game worth 600 dollars. Sorry console industry, you can only push it so far (SEE: Jaguar)