Something the company is thinking about moving forward
Nintendo remains the only platform holder still region locking its consoles, but there’s a glimmer of hope on the horizon for would-be importers.
Speaking during a Q&A session (translation viaNeoGAF)following Nintendo’s semiannual investor meeting, company president Satoru Iwata responded to inquiry as to whether there were any plans to move away from region locking.
“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.”
Maybe (hopefully) someday. I can’t help but wistfully think about all those European Game Boy Advance titles I collected for my American system. It would be nice to get back to that.
