The Wii U is region locked for various reasons, meaning you can’t buy games in one region (e.g. Japan) and play it in another region (e.g. America), and according to Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata, the Wii U will remain region locked for now.
Speaking at a recent investor Q&A, Iwata said that “Removing region-locking from current game machines presents various issues”, and that Nintendo doesn’t think it’s realistic to remove region locking from current consoles such as the Wii U.
However, he also commented on Nintendo’s next console, the NX, where he had a different take on region locking. Iwata said that they are currently “investigating internally what problems there would be in realizing it [making it region free]”. Iwata cited customer feedback and “proposals from the market” as reasons for them considering removing region locking from the Nintendo NX.
See also: Analyst believes Nintendo NX will be the dominant game controller of the smart-device era
The Nintendo NX is the successor to the Wii U, and was announced earlier this year. Other than the codename “NX”, nothing is known about the console. Satoru Iwata has previously said that Nintendo wants to “surprise gamers with the NX“.
There have been reports that the NX might be released as early as next year, where hardware maker AMD said they will launch a new console chip.
This made us wonder whether the recent Zelda Wii U delay was because Nintendo wanted to launch the NX with the game as well in 2016.
Hopefully Nintendo will have more news about the NX at E3 next month.
Via NeoGAF
