Region-Free Wii ?

September 14th, 2006, 23:00 Posted By: wraggster

The Wii will be region-free, or at least it should be.

That's the word from Wired News' Joel Johnson, who found Nintendo's VP of marketing Perrin Kaplan at the recent New York City press event and got her to reveal that, like the Nintendo DS, Nintendo's Wii games will work on any console regardless of region.

While there may be a region lock that third-party publishers can choose to turn on, Nintendo seems to be setting the standard by making its own first-party games region free.

Here's what Joel filed this morning:

Wired had the opportunity to sit down after with Nintendo Vice-President of Marketing & Corporate Affairs—not to mention affable conference host—Perrin Kaplan to ask a few questions that weren't addressed in the press conference.

• Will the Wii be region-free? Yes. Like the Nintendo DS, the Wii will be able to play games from other regions, such as Japan, without any restriction. Kaplan implied there might be a region lock that publishers would be able to flip on, but it doesn't sound like the first-party titles from Nintendo will be restricted.

• Will games downloaded from the Virtual Console store be tied to an account like Xbox Live or a one-time-only download like iTunes? Tied to an account. Kaplan discussed a scenario where a player's Wii was broken or destroyed, but would be able to re-download titles they had previously bought to a new Wii machine. Because my left leg was burning from an accidental Zippo oil spill, I neglected to ask if a user would be able to log into friends' Wiis and play their Virtual Console downloads away from their home machine.

• Will Wii users be able to add storage via USB hard drives? No. The Wii's storage will be exclusively via flash memory storage, such as SD memory cards, at least at launch. Kaplan said a hard drive addition could be in the future, but that sounds more like a "Sure, why not?" response than one based in any immediate plans.

• How much will Opera cost? Unknown. No price has yet been set for the download-able Opera web browser, but it sounds like it could very well be free, once Nintendo finishes discussions with Opera.

The big news from the press conference, besides the price—$250 for the console with one controller and Wii Sports bundled, $40 for additional Wii Remotes and $20 for additional Wii Nunchucks—was the showing of "Wii Channels," an instant-on interface where Wii players will be able to create "Mii" (me) personal avatars that work in supported games; a Wii Shop where Virtual Console games can be purchased for "Wii Points"; and photo, movie, and web browsing.

It's a slick little interface, but I continue to question whether users will want to sit in front of a television browsing the web without a keyboard, especially at non-HDTV resolutions. I guess we'll see when the Wii launches in the Americas on November 19th.

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