Nintendo NX, the next piece of dedicated gaming hardware from the house of Mario, might be region free, according to Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata.
However, don't expect to see the region locks currently in place for Wii U and 3DS to disappear anytime soon. In an Q&A session with investors (as translated by NeoGAF), Iwata explained:
Removing region-locking from current game machines presents various issues, so we don't consider that to be very realistic.
However, regarding NX, given the customer feedback and proposals from the market, while nothing has been decided yet, we're currently investigating internally what problems there would be in realizing it. You can think of that as the current situation. I understand your desire, so I'd like to look at it optimistically going forward.
How important is region-free hardware to you? Would you import more Nintendo content if the company didn't have strict region locks on its current line of handheld devices and home console? I must admit, I'd be the proud owner of one of the smaller New 3DS models if it were region free.