Topic: You know what I'd really like to see in the Wii U?

Being part of the old Empire which the sun never set on, Australia and New Zealand, by virtue of speaking English and having adopted the PAL TV system has meant that we generally have had to wait for games to pass-through the multitude of European localisations and clasifications before being released.

Nothing annoys me more as an online gamer than having the current hit titles to be released territorially but ranked globally, typically North America first.

One of my US buddies wanted me to join in playing Xcitebots Racing - never released outside of North America, and later, Japan, which meant either modding my PAL Wii or buying a NorthAm NTSC Wii. I opted for the latter and had no problem playing on my multi-sync TV i.e PAL/NTSC ambivalent, and only had to buy a pin adapter for the stock multi-voltage power supply.

So TV technology has advanced to the point that PAL vs NTSC is longer definitive for a console when it comes to HDTV, particularly when it's HDTV only.
Australia and New Zealand, to the best of my knowledge, not a member of the European Union trading bloc.

With that contextual rant out of the way, what I would like to see is either the creation of a Universal English console suitable for all English-speaking nations outside of the EU, or, the option to purchase additional regional "identification" for a console for a nominal fee - say the price of a game or less.

Of course, there will be lots of phlegmatic rumblings from various government classification bodies about how important their roles are in protecting society from it's excesses but if they're all doing the same thing to the same basic principles, it makes me wonder if they're just protecting their jobs.

There's bound to be a flaw in this idea - probably more related to some middle-man losing his cut - so I'd be interested to hear comments.

Remember that this is a two-way street idea: just as A&NZ (or any other country) would not have to wait for various European countries to classify a game before release, those few Euro-region-only titles which may not normally see the light of day Stateside would also be available to willing enthusiasts "across the pond".

Let me start by saying that I'm not going to get started on game classification but even separate to that this is not going to happen. There's no technical reason why there can't be one universal console that is not region locked at all so the fact that it isn't happening is a pretty big hint on the probability that it will. Near zero in other words. I'd also like to see this but to be honest it's not as big an issue as you claim. Worst bit about it is more the price than the few usually non-AAA titles that appear in one region and not the other.

and you make it sound like we get the worst of this which I'm not entirely sure is true. We surely get worse than Japan here in Aus and we get worse than the EU given we get the same with random omissions. I'm not sure if we get worse than the US though. We might have in the past but recently, especially in terms of downloadable titles, we have gotten more titles earlier. Don't know why that is but it's definitely a thing.

I always though the region lock was because each country wants to rate it themselves because of different social standards, what might be appropriate in one place could be terribly offensive in others, that sort of thing.
'It's all about protecting the kids!'

With that contextual rant out of the way, what I would like to see is either the creation of a Universal English console suitable for all English-speaking nations outside of the EU, or, the option to purchase additional regional "identification" for a console for a nominal fee - say the price of a game or less.

There is. It's called the "PlayStation 3."

In fact, the PlayStation 3 is a universal global console. You don't even need to be able to understand the language to play games on it.

Damn I love my Japanese PS3 collection.

Thanks or the replies!

@Skywake it's more the disparity in release dates between regions for AAA online titles that stokes the rage.
When it comes to off-line or single-player gaming, I agree and it would only be my lack of patience under extremely hyped circumstances which would provoke me to disagree
However, if you've ever played online games, due to the well-worn game mechanic of providing extra 'attributes' to players for levelling up, there's always an imbalance in the online experience which favours the regions with the early release, then the region with the best network infrastructure... can't do much about the second one, though .

@Void it's that very 'culturally offensive' stance, the monkey on the back of human society, which continues to cause so much trouble after several thousand years of recorded history (not fables). It's typically found where religion is inseparable from, and perversely impacts the development of, a code of acceptable behaviour that guarantees everyone in the world a safe place live without fear of prejudice and equal rights for all... but that's for another soapbox in a different forum

@WhiteKnight Yes... and no... you have to have - to the best of my knowledge as I did it myself - accounts set up in the other regions which if I recall correctly contravenes the aggreements we all generally skip over, especially the part about not providing bogus information about your account
I never thought to test an NTSC disk-based game on my Aussie PS3 but I had no trouble downloading stuff from the US PSN - again, the separate account spectre raises it's head: why should I have to create different accounts to access these games?
Now, if your Japanese PS3 truly had global PSN access without the need for modding or creating separate regional-based accounts in order to play 'global' then yes, that's the sort of thing I mean.

My point was that in terms of Nintendo stuffs we haven't had the massive release delays that we used to and in many cases we got the game first. New Super Mario Bros 2 came out one day earlier in Australia than it did in the US as was Mario Kart 7. If you currently go to the Australian eShop you'll see a whole pile of retail games to download including Mario Kart 7 and OoT3D which has been up for almost a week now and isn't yet up in the US. Separate to that we got the 3D Classics version of Kid Icarus as a free download if we had any one of a number of popular 3DS titles while the US had it as a pre-order bonus in select stores. Then there was Xenoblade and The Last Story which we months before it even looked like they'd ever reach the US.

Probably the worst we got that I can remember, apart from Excitebots never coming out way, would be the months waiting for Super Paper Mario. Since then we've pretty much been consistently within a week or so and sometimes even before the US launch.

A real Kid Icarus game, a platformer like the original.

A new (Seriously, not a port) Star Fox game. A Mario party and a Mario kart would be nice, too.

So we're listing our own stuff here? Okay:

Civilization Wii U: The Not Dumbed Down Version
XCOM UE - Now with Tablet Overhead Map
Starcraft 2: And You Thought Our Kinect Version Was Kick***
Dungeons & Dragons Wii U: Why Didn't We Think of This Soo...

Lol the three people above decided not to read the first post apparently.

I was thinking the same thing. XD

You know what I'd like to see? The Wii U survive this console race with all of the epic third-party games. That's all it needs. It doesn't have to be the very best, like no system ever was. It just needs to be able to get everything the other two will get and make it another 5-7 years. That's all I really want for the Wii U.

As for region blocking, it doesn't affect me that much. I don't mind if you EU people get games that us NA people won't see or vice-versa. Just so long as all the heavy hitters go mulit-continent, I'm good.

If the Wii U 2 isn't announced in 3 years, I'd actually fear for the future of Nintendo.

Until a game you really want doesn't make it to the US, that is.

@Jon_Talbain I don't think we'll need a Wii U 2 so soon. It probably won't even be called the Wii anything. But that's a forum topic for a later date...

And region blocked games that I can't get that I want don't bug me. Sure, having it would be cool, but it's not like the world will end if I don't get it. Yeah, I'd like to have Monster Hunter 3DS already and I would probably like to have a ton of other Japan-only games, but since I have other games to choose from, I'm not disappointed. Great games that don't go multiplatform for whatever reason (No Skyrim on Wii for example) do make me upset, but I don't get too worked up over that either because there are still other games to choose from.

I don't think there was ever an announcement of DVDs to be on Wii U, I don't know to think whether it should be automatically guranteed, or if DVDs are now getting too outdated, even for Nintendo.
Personally I would like it, after all, the Wii U is supposed to be my multi media system.

@Radixxs it's probably too long for most people. Heck, even I finish at a different point than where I started - LOL!

I wasn't so much commenting on individual titles (other than by way of example) but the way in which titles are released as far as having another avenue where Nintendo can break new ground as a part of the experience 'package' of the Wii U. As with other forms of media, I see know reason why simultaneous global release is such a hassle and could see that in some way it would impact piracy.

But if people want to comment here on other aspects of the Wii U experience that they'd like to see - such as 'adding friends in Miiverse to be as easy as PSN/XboxLive' - then go for it.

I guess the other thing that's kind of bugging me is that TVii is North America/US only and that there's no hint of what we can expect - if anything - in other regions... Unless of course there's been an announcement that's been made about TVii since I last checked

Here's another one, although it's probably aimed more at game developers than the Wii U.

CONSOLE GAMING IN 2012 IS QUITE CAPABLE OF SUPPORTING A KEYBOARD AND MOUSE!

Believe it or not, there's a high percentage of USB keyboards out inthe houses of consumers: they're cheap and plentiful, as are the wireless dongle versions, and Bluetooth is no longer the 'new kid nobody knows' either.

Bring me my hard-core RTS and TBS with all speed!