Satoru Iwata says Nintendo “must consider” removing region locking

Last week Nintendo held an investor briefing in Japan and like usual Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was there afterwards to handle some Q&A.

One of the questions asked of Mr Iwata was on the controversial subject of region locking and if there was any plans to reverse this?

Usually we’d expect Satoru Iwata to reconfirm the companies undying love of the practise, but the response was something we didn’t expect. This unofficial translation is via Cheesemeister on NeoGAF, an official translation from Nintendo will be posted in the coming days and may differ slightly.

[quote]Q4: At present, your company’s hardware and games make use of region-locking, by which games purchased in one region cannot be played in another region. Are there any plans to unlock this restriction?

A4: Iwata: 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.

[/quote]

Not the usual quote you would get from Nintendo in regards to region locking but still far from becoming a reality.

A positive move.