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First-party Wii games will be region-free [update 2]
After tactfully cornering Nintendo's VP of Marketing at their NYC event, Joel Johnson from Wired News was able to extract a rather valuable tidbit of information that will likely please gamers all across the world. Perrin Kaplan casually confirmed that all first-party Wii games will be free of draconian region locks, thus allowing them to run on a Wii system purchased from Japan, Europe, America and everything in-between. The same doesn't hold true for third-party games yet, but one can only hope they follow the glorious example and do away with an annoying system that has long since been dropped in handheld platforms. If you can surmount the language barrier, feel free to gleefully bring Nintendo's next turnbased roommate adventure Pokemon dating card RPG to America, even if they won't.[Via Game|Life][Update 1: Gamesindustry.biz reports that Nintendo UK says the Wii is region-locked. This is contrary to Perrin Kaplan's statements, though her exact comments may have been misinterpreted to begin with. It's possible that Kaplan implied first-party games would specifically be region-free -- which is not the same thing as saying the console is region-free. After all, one can play region-free DVDs on a region-locked DVD player. Not that the Wii can play DVDs anymore...][Update 2: It was too good to be true.]
Who's got a Joystiq T-shirt?
Our limited-edition Joystiq T-shirts are rolling out to our biggest (and speediest) fans right now. Then there's our not as limited-edition Joystiq E3 shirts that we were giving out at the show. Did you grab enough business cards from Joystiqers on the show floor, like the Joystiq luchador did? Did you make it to the AOL booth during our short, one-hour handout? Or were you gracious enough to grant Joystiq an interview, like Peter, Perrin, Shane, and Miyamoto-san? If you're sporting a Joystiq tee, let us know what you think. Didn't get one? We'll be giving away the orange shirts on the site so keep your eyes peeled. And if you see somebody sporting one on the street, stop 'em and say hi. They're either Joystiq readers or one of us.Big thanks to Philip and Yann for the incredible designs. Seriously, we're humbled.
The Engadget & Joystiq Interview: Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan
On the last day of E3 we got to sit down with Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America's Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Affairs. We still had a lot of questions for her to field after interviewing Miyamoto-san the day before, specifically regarding the naming of the Wii (yeah, we had to ask), what Nintendo's online strategy actually is, what they're doing with launching first party titles like Smash Bros. on the Wii, why the GameCube was suspiciously absent this year, and exactly where homebrew gaming fits into the final equation.So I guess we should get started. Thank you very much for meeting us. Everybody here has this badge that says "what's your brain age?" so I'm curious to know what your brain age is. Oh my gosh, I haven't played in a good couple of weeks. I guess down to 30 or so. Really? Yeah, I need to work on it. Our President [Satoru Iwata] is very proud that his is 20. Today is the last day, everything is pretty much behind us. How do you guys think you fared? Even better than we thought. I think we were all really excited coming in, with pretty much trying to say to people, "It's not about what you see, you have to try it," which is why our theme is "playing equals believing." I think you really have to try and take the products for a ride yourself. And that people are embracing that and lining up at record lengths and number of hours and really enjoying it -- saying it was worth the wait is fantastic. One of the things I've been hearing from a lot of people in the industry is they felt that Sony really fell flat this year, and I was curious to know what you think they could have done better. That's a hard one. I have my own personal rule: I don't hold a media briefing that's over 60 minutes. I think it's really hard to have a captive audience be engaged that long. Even in school, I could have had the most stimulating presentation from a teacher and an hour starts to get a long time. That's probably one thing I would do differently. But their product line is what their product line is and their approach is their approach, so what I would do differently is really hard for me to say because we're over here doing something really different and it feels really great. I think being innovative, at least for us, is exciting.
