Topic: Poll: Should Nintendo remove their regional locking for Wii U and 3DS?

I was surfing on the web for some Wii U news, and I saw an article about a petition that asks Nintendo to remove the region-lock practice that is currently on Nintendo Wii U and 3DS.

The question is: Should Nintendo remove their regional locking for Wii U and 3DS? and why?

Wii U? Probably.

3DS? Yes, it's a portable console, if I want to buy a game on my travels, I want to be able to, you see, you can take a 3DS with you, it can be moved from place to place, it is PORTABLE.

Yes it should be removed. Dont really even understand why we have it in the first place.

Don't care for WiiU.

But 3DS should definitely not be region locked IMO. It's a freaking portable.

The government is losing control of all you hipster punk youngsters so it's up to good old papa Ninty to put a end to all the gallabanting around by using your beloved vidiya games... We need to keep you whippersnappers in line somehow otherwise you go wild and have no respect for anything

Region-locking should be removed from everything, so yes.

It absolutely needs to be removed from 3DS. It's portable, so if you're someone that travels a lot between countries, buying games will be annoying.
As for the Wii U, I'd also like for it to be removed, if only for Europeans and Australia. I'm pretty sure it's really annoying for them whenever the US gets a game from Atlus in English and it never comes to their region (yeah, it's more of a 3DS thing, but still).

They should remove it for both the Wii U and 3DS. And one day, I'm pretty sure they'll be forced to.

I kinda think they should be removed, if solely on the basis that people travel (or move) to different regions and take their devices with them. Like, if I bought a Wii U in America and I move to Japan, why should I have to buy another Wii U to play the same games available in Japan that are also available in America? By enabling region locking, I would have to import from America to play games on my American Wii U.

Now, what I think they should do is keep the region-detecting identification, and when booting a game from another region, it gives a disclaimer or sorts to say that you are playing a game from a different region, and that it might contain content that may differ from the cultural norms of your own region. By accepting, you acknowledge this, so the developer/publisher/Nintendo are not responsible for what cultural difference you experience. This would be something integrated into the Wii U and 3DS OS, so it retroactively applies to all games, even those released before this change.

What is the benefit to Nintendo if they do remove it?

Good PR and a few sales of games and systems. Then there's the fact that lots of people won't feel like homebrewing their systems if it's region free.
What advantages does region locking bring to Nintendo in the first place? People bring up piracy, but I never get an explanation as to how region locking a system prevents it. The Vita is region free and there's no piracy on it. Meanwhile, the Dreamcast was region locked and piracy was one of the main reasons for its downfall. As for "cultural differences", Nintendo could just make it a part of the parental settings, like some here have suggested.

I think Nintendo doesn't know what they're doing with region-locking.It just needs to stop.

they should remove it, it would really hurt sales down the line if they don't

Yes, yes, and yes, it's one of the oldest, worst, and most anti-consumer policies in the whole industry. It shouldn't have even been there in the first place.

I think they should get rid of it, too. There's an article here on NL explaining why they do it in the first place. Whether those reasons are good enough for some is a different story...

Also, yes, they are legitimate reasons.

More money.
Lifting the region lock means that people can buy games and hardware not available in their region.

Even though it wouldn't really matter to me, I do think that they should get rid of region locking, just for the sake of European and Australian gamers..

Yes. If not, the hackers will get to it eventually and I'm sure Nintendo won't like that. If the community keeps asking/emailing/posting on Miiverse/Twitter/Facebook, Nintendo is bound to do something about it eventually.

RANDOM: Any reason why games in different regions get released on different dates? I can understand Japan getting the games earlier if they are developed there, then translating and making them available to a place like the US, but why don't places like the US/UK/Australia always get games on the same dates? (For the most part), language should not be an issue. Is there something else that I'm missing here?

An interesting argument...