With the recent news of Microsoft reversing some of its controversial policies on the Xbox One, a man by the name of Josh Stevens took it upon himself to start an online petition to end Nintendo’s region-locking on the 3DS and Wii U.
Now that both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 will be completely free of region-locking, a fair number of gamers are left wondering why Nintendo continues to region-lock their content. Given that the general assumption is that Microsoft reverse their DRM and region-locking policies due to public outcry and pre-order numbers, it seems like assembling a formal petition online may not be a bad idea. Obviously the big downside to this petition is that both the Wii U and the 3DS are already available, so pre-order numbers from the core gaming audience are completely irrelevant here.
Following Microsoft’s U-turn on its DRM policies, including making the Xbox One region-free alongside the PS4, Nintendo is now left as the only major console manufacturer that maintains a region-locking policy. This practice is restrictive to customers, including those who enjoy playing foreign games not available domestically, speak foreign languages, serve in the military, or otherwise travel or live abroad. If anything, region-free policies encourage the additional sales of legitimate software that cannot otherwise be obtained in a given country; the money would still go to Nintendo, the developers and the distributors behind each game.
The above is an exert from the online petition and provides a very valid argument against region-locking. It is followed by mention of how Nintendo seems to make a very honest effort to minimize the delay between games being released in various countries across the world, but that this is not the primary reason why region-locking is detrimental.
Nintendo has been amazing in its attempts to shorten the gap in release dates between different territories (e.g. the worldwide launch of Pokémon X and Y this October) and we are truly grateful for that, but we don’t want region-free consoles just so we can purchase and play some games earlier than usual. We want region-free consoles so that we may exercise our consumer rights to choose what games we play and to thus expand our horizons.
We ask that Nintendo please release system firmware updates that will remove region-locking from the Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and Wii systems.
If you would like to sign the online petition, it can be found here.
