Nintendo president addresses the issue of region-locking

In a recent briefing for investors and analysts, the president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, gave an official response to a question asking if there are plans to remove and unlock region restrictions.

As you may already be aware, Nintendo is currently pretty stringent with its region-locking policy, with each and every 3DS unit on the market locked to play games from their set region.

This wasn't always the case though - every Ninty handheld from the original Game Boy through to the Nintendo DS was region free; capable of playing each and every cartridge or card on the market.

In his response to the question, Iwata raised the issues of localisation and licensing as key excuses. He did, however, ponder the following:

"In a sense, the region-lock has existed more for reasons having to do with the seller than the consumers. [...] as for what should be done going forward, there may be advantages for the consumers and also for us if they were unlocked."

Some game enthusiasts are keen to play obscure titles that are unlikely to receive releases in their home region, due to the perceived potential audience being too small in size.

Iwata's answer could mean future iterations of the 3DS after the New 3DS units will forego region restrictions, or perhaps have an opt-in region-locking system for publishers as used on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

An even better solution would be a firmware update to nullify region locking for all 3DS models. We wouldn't suggest getting your hopes up too much though.