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."
I'm waiting for the word from Nintendo of Japan before I believe anything.
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.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
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."
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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