No import titles, says Nintendo
With its aggressive attempt to make the Wii U different and appeal to hard core gamers as well as the standard fare, we thought that Nintendo might choose to live a little and let the publishers decide if titles needed to be region-locked or not. Instead, it is the same old Nintendo dogma.
Yes, Nintendo has confirmed that the Wii U will be region-locked. This means that the Wii U that you purchase in a particular region will only play games designated for that region. Import titles from other regions can’t be played on your system.
Nintendo has not even attempted to defend the decision to do this or be like other platforms and let the software developers choose if they wish to lock their games to a specific region. We really don’t see the point of region-locking any longer, since in most cases the number of players that would consider playing an import title is only a small slice of the entire installed user base.
In the end, the decision will not really matter or influence the success (or lack thereof) Nintendo experiences with the sale of the Wii U; so ultimately, it only actually matters to a select few. Still, it would have been nice to see Nintendo think outside the box a little and choose to do something different this time.
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