NEWS: NINTENDO DISCUSSES REGION-LOCKING DURING Q&A SESSION

As some may know, many game titles can only be played in their countries of origin. I guess this restriction hasn’t crossed your mind unless you have international friends who has told you about some game only playable overseas. Well, for Nintendo fans this might not be a problem much longer.

In a recent financial results Q&A, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata talked about the region-locking on all of Nintendo’s current devices. He also discussed the pros and cons in removing region-locks. Here’s what he had to say:

“There have been various conditions at play in the game business, such as a history of localization taking an extremely long time, a variety of marketing constraints and circumstances in each country, and the fact that the license needed to sell games have not always been granted globally,” Iwata said.

“In a sense, the region-lock has existed more for reasons having to do with the seller than the consumers. That has been the situation throughout the history of video game systems, and as for what should be done going forward, there may be advantages for the consumers and also for us if they were unlocked.”

“Conversely,” he added, “unlocking them would mean having to resolve different issues that would subsequently arise. While we have not decided whether we will unlock them or not, we do recognize that it is an issue that needs to be considered in the future.”

            So basically, one of the reasons games are region-locked is that the programming it takes to make the games work globally is very time consuming, as well is the difficulty of getting licensing. Moreover, if the region-locks were removed, there would be a whole new set of problems to deal with. So until the day that we can buy a Nintendo game overseas and play it in our American systems comes, we’ll just have to settle for hearing about them on the internet. Hopefully, that day will come sooner rather than later.

Go With the Flow

By: Eclipse Phantom

Picture via Siliconera