Following the announcement of the North America release of the Wii on November 19th, Arstechnica has verified that the Nintendo Wii will be region free.
Joel Johnson over at Wired News could squeeze the information out of Perrin Kaplan (VP of Marketing and Affairs for Nintendo of America) that Wii won’t have regional lock-out for first-party titles. This means that Nintendo software will be region free, while third-party publishers can decide on their own whether or not they want to include a region code with their releases.
Most systems are region coded, much like DVD players, which means that games from Asia won’t play in US systems and vice versa. The Wii has opened the doors for development games to be a single release for the most part.
The nitty gritty details for the Wii and release information for everyone.
In terms of pricing, the Wii will change hands for 25.000 Yen (~ US$215.50; €170.00) in Japan, and for 250 US$ stateside. The US launch bundle will include Wii: Sports, which, as a compilation of five different sports (Tennis, Ping Pong, Baseball, Golf, Flying), is the ideal intuitive title to get the entire family around the new machine for some immediate fun. This specific software is certainly the perfect choice to demonstrate the Wiimote functionalities and to reveal the potential of the Wii concept at first touch. Launch games will be priced around 50 USD, while the Virtual Console library will offer the biggest hits of the Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom / SNES, the N64, the Megadrive and the PC Engine for download, with prices ranging between 5 and 10 US$ a click.
My mouth is watering and I’ve already placed my Wii Preorder, have you? To tide you over for a few months, here are a few pictures from the Tokyo Wii show.
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