Nintendo DSi Software Will Be Region Locked

aliquis writes with news that software made for the recently announced Nintendo DSi will be region-locked. Nintendo's reasoning is that the DSi "embeds net communication functionality within itself and we are intending to provide net services specifically tailored for each region." It's also been discovered that accounts with the DSi's online store won't be linked with the Wii store, so points for one won't work with the other. Nintendo has stated that they don't intend for digital distribution to replace retail sales. We discussed the DSi's announcement last week.

Comments

Re:No more imports for you

[Sparton]

Wrong. From the Gamasutra article that also reported on this (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20525):

The DSi, however, will be able to play standard Nintendo software from any region, similar to the original Nintendo DS model and the Nintendo DS Lite.

The article is only partly right; the region-free aspect is only going to happen for games. Whatever new shenanigans they come up with for the DSi is what will be region locked.

Re:Region locked? Sounds like...

[Trogre]

It also sounds a lot like something Nintendo would do:

The Nintendo Wii has region locking, and many games (such as Zelda) use it.
The Nintendo Gamecube and SNES also had region locking, though more primitive.
The Sony PSP supports region locking of UMD movies and games, but no games are locked.
The Sony PS3 supports some degree of region locking for games, but no games are locked.

(Please someone correct me if I'm wrong about any of these)