Imagine a world where regional locks no longer apply to a Nintendo, well that could apparently be coming to fruition if the company's CEO is to believed. In a recent Q&A session held by Nintendo's CEO and President Satoru Iwata, he revealed that it is indeed within the realm of possibility that the newest console coming from the company is finally without regional locks.
If this does indeed come to pass, then the new console, currently codenamed NX, could truly break new ground for the company. It is worth noting that Iwata has not exactly confirmed that the NX will be region-free, according to Siliconera, but they are open to the idea. Iwata has said that he wants to take the undertaking seriously.
Unfortunately, all he and Nintendo can do as of now is to say that they are taking this idea into consideration because they still don't have anything substantial to reveal, according to Anime News Network. Removing regional locks does figure to be a somewhat complex issue, so giving them time on this particular matter would seem to be in order.
As for whether regional locks could possibly be removed for consoles currently out on the market such as the Wii U and 3DS, Iwata was more definite in saying that doing so is unrealistic, according to IGN.
"Removing region-locking from current game machines presents various issues, so we don't consider that to be very realistic," said Iwata.
It's easy to frown upon that statement and chalk it up to Nintendo perhaps only paying lip service when it comes to region locks, and they realistically aren't thinking about removing them at all, but it is worth noting that Iwata has already brought this issue up before.
Iwata already talked about the possibility of removing region locks for the new Nintendo console even dating back to last year, so him continuing to talk about it until now lends some credibility to the idea that this could be a reality.
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