Nintendo Will Region Lock The Wii U

by Mike on September 24, 2012

Nintendo’s next generation game console, the Wii U is getting closer to its official launch date and as we approach this date, we’re starting to learn a little more about just how Nintendo plans on handling their device. The latest word is that Nintendo plans on making these devices region specific, thereby locking them to a single region.

In doing so, customers that have purchased the console in one part of the world with the purpose of bringing it to their home country may find that games bought locally will not work due to the fact that they are from a different region then the console itself. For customers, this may appear to be a real pain, but companies are known to lock their devices for the purpose of preventing software and games from being imported to other regions without official approval from the parent company.

This isn’t the first time that Nintendo has turned to region locking of their devices as we’ve seen the company take a similar approach with a number of their earlier consoles including the Nintendo 3DS and the first generation Wii.

Those that are looking forward to the launch of the Wii U have about another 90 days left in their wait with the device expected to launch in the United States on November 18th, followed by Europe on November 30th and Japan on December 8th.

Source