Nintendo Is Strongly Considering Region-Unlocking Its Hardware

Nintendo is different from its peers in a number of ways, and sometimes those differences result in bad news for the consumer. Take region-locking, for instance — all Nintendo home consoles have been restricted to only run games from its source region. Nintendo handhelds were a region-free paradise up until the DSi, when the company started clamping down there as well. Meanwhile, neither Sony nor Microsoft seem to have an issue with gamers playing anything from anywhere. Why is Nintendo the odd duckling? As CEO Satoru Iwata vaguely explained last year, "there are some reasons behind it."

But during the Q&A session of the recent financial briefing, Iwata delivered a surprisingly hopeful response to a question about Nintendo's future region-locking plans. The Q&A portion has not been translated into English yet, thus NeoGAF user Cheesemeister took it upon himself to provide one. Here's what Iwata had to say:

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.

It's certainly peculiar that Nintendo has maintained this stance for so long despite the great strides its competitors have taken, but at least now we know that Nintendo understands our frustrations and may rework its policies sooner rather than later.

Once the official translation of the Q&A is posted, we'll be able to read what other queries Nintendo's head honcho answered.