By Nick Dowell
Satoru Iwata has indicated a willingness to rethink Nintendo's region-locking policy on it's Wii U and 3DS systems, says Iwata at a Q&A with investors.
According to a translation done by Zelda Informer, some of the decision to region-lock comes from publishers. He said that region-locking normally happened for the sake of the publishers, not the consumers. This is due to issues with licensing and marketing, as well as localization:
"The game business has a history of taking a very long time with localization among other things, such as having to deal with various issues of marketing in each particular country, or games that have made use of licensed content that did not apply globally, and had all kinds of circumstances, so to say, that region-locking has existed due to circumstances on the sellers' side rather than for the sake of the customers. In the history of game consoles, that is the current situation.Iwata later went on that there are both benefits and downfalls to ending region locks that will need to be considered:
"As for what should be done going forward, if unlocked for the benefit of the customers, there may also be a benefit for us. Conversely, unlocking would require various problems to be solved, so while I can't say today whether or not we intend to unlock, we realize that it is one thing that we must consider looking to the future."Despite the potential to happen, there are no official plans to end the locks, so players will have to continue to wait for American releases of Nintendo games.
-----
Source: Polygon
Image: Polygon
