Sometimes crusades fail- a brutal lesson that many Nintendo fans will have to come to realize. As of today, Nintendo is going to keep the use of region locking on their consoles, bringing a temporary setback to a battle to remove the controversial policy.
For those who do not know, there has been a campaign to convince Nintendo to remove their long practice in using region locking on their consoles, the latest being the Wii U. Led by a member of NeoGAF early last month, the campaign saw a petition on change.org, which reached over 12,500 signatures, a large movement on Twitter, where many hashtags like #EndRegionLocking and #NintendoRegionFree were used, and a large amount of drawings promoting the campaign on the Wii U’s Miiverse service.
Here is what the petition stated:
“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.”
However, Nintendo did not flinch, and they responded to fans about why they decided to keep the region locking policy. Nintendo stated that they had “no plans to remove region locking” on their systems, as this allowed Nintendo to “include parental controls and ensure compliance with regional standards and rating systems.”
This is quite the shocker, as Nintendo has been getting a lot of heat lately for their questionable decisions, including the banning of Wii U owners online that mention the term “region locking.” However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Nintendo won’t change their tune about region locking in the future, as even Microsoft found themselves removing the feature after fan pressure.
Do you think Nintendo should remove region locking? Do you think fans should continue the fight to remove it? Let us hear what you have to say.
Update: Due to poor wording, some readers may have believed that the campaign above was dropped, but it is not, and they continue to fight for the removal of region locking on Nintendo systems as we speak. Sorry for the inconvenience.
