Nintendo Wii Region-Locked
- September 18th, 2006
- 13 Comments
Nintendo UK General Manager David Yarnton has stated that Nintendo of America was wrong for telling us that the console would be region-free, and that the Nintendo Wii will in fact, be region-locked. Too bad, it really would’ve been great to get Japanese imports the legitimate way. Looks like users are going to have to old school it with the Wii and mod their consoles to be able to play other regions.
According to our friends over at SlashGear , there is another theory floating around that the Wii will be region free for US and Japan, but locked for Europe. No word on how legitimate this one is either, we’ll keep you posted!
Nintendo Wii Region-Locked [SlashGear]
Bassam (Who am I?)
2 years ago
That’s a shame… Why region lock the Wii when the Nintendo DS is region-free?
I’m sure that Nintendo probably isn’t making much money off the import market, but allowing us US gamers to import those quirky Japanese games would have made the Wii that much better.
I doubt this will affect any Wii sales over here, though. Especially at a little more than half the cost of the 360.
Raj Patel (Who am I?)
2 years ago
Agreed. I don’t quite understand it either.
Dickson (Who am I?)
2 years ago
The price for the Nintendo Wii is a little too high in New Zealand, the premium X360 console is $719 here, and the Nintendo Wii is going to be sold at $499.90. That makes no sense as we are being charged a lot more than we should, with our dollar being worth 66 US cents, you’d expect it to be $400 at most, but Australia and us are being overcharged with this price. I’m seriously looking into the possibility of importing the Wii, as the price here is ridiculous.
Michael Vincent Wood (Who am I?)
2 years ago
The Wii is hell of a dumbass name. as far as i can tell, most nintendo products dont seem to be on par with other systems but the last nintendo product i bought was the game boy
fdsa (Who am I?)
2 years ago
supid
Jason (Who am I?)
2 years ago
Michael.., get over it!
The name has been around since April!
LKM (Who am I?)
2 years ago
Actually, it’s still unclear. It seems that game manufacturers *can* make their games region locked if they want to, but don’t have to. And First-party titles may not be region locked.
http://blog.wired.com/games/index.blog?entry_id=1556591
http://gonintendo.com/?p=5750
Or mabye not:
http://gonintendo.com/?p=5757
And, uhm, Michael? Grow up.
Rael B. Riolino (Who am I?)
2 years ago
Dickinson, here in Brazil we got the same problem, a XBOX 360 is about R$ 1700,00…. and rumors that wii will cust about R$ 1400,00….. :(
hope that is wrong rumors… But i think it´s not! :(((((((
Brooke (Who am I?)
2 years ago
I don’t understand why they have region codes in any product. Really, I’m curious. Is it so that they can control the flow of sub-products (such as DVDs to DVD-Players) into the various markets?
ry
2 years ago
your mothers arent region locked
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LKM (Who am I?)
2 years ago
>Is it so that they can control the flow of
>sub-products (such as DVDs to DVD-Players)
>into the various markets?
As far as I know, the problem is with the translations. If enough people import a game, the investment in translating it to the local language will not pay off anymore, hence limiting the total market for the game.
Also, if there are regions, they can launch games in different regions at different times at different price points. People can’t just import the “older,” cheaper version of the game.
Anonymous
9 months ago
My Wii’s Italian, will it still play English games?
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