Portable Planet

Among the big news from Nintendo yesterday were a few other Wii tidbits that got lost in the big hullabaloo. Some of the more interesting bits were about the role of regions in Nintendo Wii games and whether or not the console would indeed also be able to play DVD movies.

The glass is both half empty and half full.

On the full front, Wii will be region-free for first party titles like its cousin DS. Wired News’ Joel Johnson asked Nintendo Vice-President of Marketing & Corporate Affairs Perrin Kaplan “Will the Wii be region free?” Her reply was, “Yes. Like the Nintendo DS, the Wii will be able to play games from other regions, such as Japan, without any restriction. Kaplan implied there might be a region lock that publishers would be able to flip on, but it doesn’t sound like the first-party titles from Nintendo will be restricted.”

On the half empty end, there will be no DVD movie playback on Wii after all. “They were originally considering an external [DVD] attachment,” a Nintendo rep told Gamespot. “But because the price of DVD players has dropped so much and they have become so commonplace, Nintendo saw no need to create extra hardware options that would drive up the cost for consumers.”

If we had to choose between one or the other, we would have chosen the lack of region locking anyhow. We’re optimists like that.

Update: Nintendo now says “We are region locked.” New story here.