“We want European and Japanese ports!” scream the legions of North American Nintendo fans, and if recent comments by Satoru Iwata during a Japanese Q & A last week were made in earnest, this may soon be the case as he mulls over the idea of ending region locking for Nintendo consoles and handhelds. This translation of Iwata’s comments comes courtesy of Cheesemeister on the NeoGAF forums:
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. 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.
Considering both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One are region-free, it definitely would work in Nintendo’s favour to unlock their consoles and handhelds in order to stay competitive. If gamers want to access “licensed content” from another continent, good on them! As for the release of games being staggered across continents, that is becoming less and less the case as games are starting to see much more in the way of global simultaneous launches which kind of renders the whole idea of region-locking obsolete.
What do you make of Satoru Iwata’s comments? Do you think Nintendo needs to end region lockingĀ in order to stay competitive? Let us know in the comments.
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