The Wii Is Not Region Locked?
Posted by: Aaron Lockard on November 29, 2006 3:40:21 PM (146 Reads)

The Wii is not region locked but you still can't play Euro games in the States

The Wii is not and never will be region locked but each system only supports a certain TV standards. In the States an Japan this standard is NTSC while in Europe and Australia the standard is PAL.

So if you live in the States and want to import Japan games go ahead it'll work no problem but if you import games from Europe or Australia your Wii will most likely not play the games. The same applies for Australia and or Europe, they can import from each other but not from America or Japan.

Have fun importing!

An Excerpt from the source of the Region Locking leak:

I have just checked with Nintendo's customer support whether the Wii is, in fact, region locked or not. The Nintendo support team sent the following reply:

The Wii will not play games from Japan or America as their TV system, NTSC, is not compatible with ours. This has always been the case with Nintendo consoles and has nothing to do the accepted term of “Region Locking'.

This sounded promising, but I decided to ask them to clarify:

So besides the TV standard, the consoles are compatible?

What if I do not hook the Wii console up to a non-TV screen, for example to a computer's LCD screen? Mine has composite and svideo-in. Or does this actually depend on differences in the hardware and/or software? I surely would hope this is not the case.

The Nintendo Wii Support team promptly replied to this:

The Wii will be built to play the games from the area which it will be used in. So a UK Wii will only play European games oh and Australian games as they are on PAL as well. The USA Wii will play their games and Japanese games as they are NTSC.

So it's the official answer: Wii is not region locked, but the hardware will not support a different TV format. They did evade my question whether or not output to a non-tv would make any difference, but I seriously doubt this is the case.

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