Because, if it's region-locked, you can't buy another controller at a local store. That's the point? They're blocking you from using any controller you want on your system. You can make the argument for region-locking for games, though it's an entirely unneeded protection measure, but going as far as controllers is pretty stupid.
It doesn't but its just another boned headed decision, and my dad works in Saudi Arabia and this makes it harder to move stuff back and forth when he visits and goes back to work.
edit: Oh and don't fucking tell me what I was and wasn't going to do with my money. I was jazzed as I finally had enough money to cover rent and buy one, but anti-consumer and not being able to share with my dad totally put me off. Also don't people import games and systems? This kills that even more.
It still doesn't make it a legitimate complaint. There are legitimate complaints about Wii U right now (GamePad battery life, loading times, slow eShop/firmware downloads, to name a few), but here I mostly see people who don't ever plan to buy a Wii U making up theoretical circumstances in which it may be an issue. You shouldn't complain about small things when you have much more important issues.
wait for the moment Nintendo decides to sell the Pads separately, but only in Japan...it will be nice to see how people will still defend this bullshit then
"The circumstances in which this can effect someone are varied, therefore it doesn't matter" is a defensive and shitty attitude no matter how you cut it.
Do you know the reasons for it though? Region locking for games is obviously greed, but in this case I see it more as a software/technological/legal issue than anything else.
I don't own a Wii U now or for the foreseeable future. However, if I were to buy one I'd probably get it while in Japan.
If games started to come out that utilized multiple controllers, or my controller just stopped working for whatever reason, I'd have to wait until I went to Japan again or import a controller. It just seems so unnecessary.
I'm honestly not outraged. I have no intentions of getting a Wii U any time soon, but I could see why people who have imported the system already would be greatly annoyed. It's just a stupid decision that doesn't seem to benefit anyone. It certainly doesn't benefit consumers.
There are a heap of stupid anti-consumer decisions with the Wii U, though. This is just another one on the massive pile.
"The circumstances in which this can effect someone are varied, therefore it doesn't matter" is a defensive and shitty attitude no matter how you cut it.
It doesn't matter in my situation. I'm not in the position to leverage my power in a way to save all people this does effect. If the opportunity comes along and I see someone that Nintendo fails to provide a solution to, then I will be "angry" enough to join in.
Do you know the reasons for it though? Region locking for games is obviously greed, but in this case I see it more as a software/technological/legal issue than anything else.
Good to see someone at Nintendo design is spending time and resources on important functionality such as this, and not wasting their time working on things like wireless range and battery life.
I don't own a Wii U now or for the foreseeable future. However, if I were to buy one I'd probably get it while in Japan.
If games started to come out that utilized multiple controllers, or my controller just stopped working for whatever reason, I'd have to wait until I went to Japan again or import a controller. It just seems so unnecessary.
I'm honestly not outraged. I have no intentions of getting a Wii U any time soon, but I could see why people who have imported the system already would be greatly annoyed. It's just a stupid decision that doesn't seem to benefit anyone. It certainly doesn't benefit consumers.
There are a heap of stupid anti-consumer decisions with the Wii U, though. This is just another one on the massive pile.
Because, if it's region-locked, you can't buy another controller at a local store. That's the point? They're blocking you from using any controller you want on your system. You can make the argument for region-locking for games, though it's an entirely unneeded protection measure, but going as far as controllers is pretty stupid.
Since it's the firmware which is preventing the update, we would have to wait for a theoretical multiplayer game to come out to see if another controller worked with the system to see if it would connect. It's possible it would considering I believe the update to controller firmware is probably for system reasons rather than game reasons.
Also did the guy actually go back and try the other controller after the update was done?
I read the article. It really says that you can actually connect US controller to Japanese Wii U, or vice versa. However, the online update (didn't know it actually updates controller's firmware) recognizes the region of the controller and prevents you to progress.
I don't know what it says either. The economic and ethical rationale for putting this sort of restriction of a peripheral is baffling to say the least. There's no technical reason for it.
I spent a night over in Paris once and wanted to watch Netflix on a French TV. With a bit of VPN and an HDMI adapter, I could off my iPhone.
I couldn't say the same thing fifteen years ago. There was SECAM, lack of internet, and the Dark Ages.
I think what I'm getting at is a lot of technical barriers that have, in the past, got in the way of interoperability with video entertainment has largely been broken down with new standards.
Sure, Japan and the US didn't exactly have a lot of the same problems NTSC and electrical requirements were the same. There was and still is the language barrier. I couldn't even doodle a line of Kanji into character recognition software to save my life.
The fact the only thing Nintendo has left is coding regional restrictions into the firmware of their systems, let alone their controllers now, is eye-rolling, not world ending.
At this point, Nintendo's still a tiny itty bitty fraction of technology as a whole. Their engineering and marketing departments have very loose definitions of "academic" thinking.
Still waiting for that Iwata Asks: Friend Codes and Region Locking.
There might be. I really don't give a damn, though. How does Nintendo not figure that shit out? Oh wait, they're Nintendo. They're in the business of not figuring stuff out.
wait to the december npd but you do know we had the same things said after launch yet it did 400k even though people there were mountains of units at best buy and other stores. Now it may well of had a terrible december but as we saw a few weeks ago going by the units you see in a store may not be the best indicator.
Yeah, we'll see. Personally, I don't think 400k is very impressive in the month you launch (and the biggest shopping month of the year), especially if you weren't particularly supply constrained. I'd be surprised if the December numbers were very good. The word of mouth around the Wii U isn't very good.
So Nintendo thought this was worth prioritising over something else the console didn't support (like DLC), inflating the day one update more, because some big bad mean consumer might import a controller, that aren't even available seperately yet?
I simply don't care what a minority of user base may theoretically experience in the future (and you can't argue that it is not a minority) as long as there are issues that make the experience much worse for the whole user base.
Yeah, you can easily just iron out those legal kinks.
Hey, doesn't this actually make it illegal to use an American Wii U in some European nations, due to interference? Or do those laws not apply to imported electonics?
I don't know what it says either. The economic and ethical rationale for putting this sort of restriction of a peripheral is baffling to say the least. There's no technical reason for it.
Well since it is a firmware issue, we already know the technical reason. At it's worst, Nintendo would be trying to price fix the controller prices across different regions.
So Nintendo thought this was worth prioritising over something else the console didn't support (like DLC), inflating the day one update more, because some big bad mean consumer might import a controller?
Seems to be a firmware issue, hopefully it's corrected but I'm not too optimistic.
While this will affect a really small percentage of the Wii U userbase*, "Who cares?" is still a pretty poor argument to defend this.
1. You buy a NA and Japanese console to get around the software region lock, you would need to buy 2 more controllers to play multi
2. Move to a different country
3. Special edition controller releases in one region only
4. You opt for a JP console because of the games that won't be released in English, but then it might be cheaper to buy a 2nd controller from the US.
etc.
* region locked software affects a really minuscule percentage of a given console userbase, I don't see anyone defending it though.
I simply don't care what a minority of user base may theoretically experience in the future (and you can't argue that it is a minority) as long as there are issues that make the experience much worse for the whole user base.
The theme of a lot of posts in this thread, yours included, is that we shouldn't complain about one issue when there are bigger issues. That's dumb. We can complain about all of them at once. Smaller issues aren't suddenly non-issues just because a larger one exists.
I simply don't care what a minority of user base may theoretically experience in the future (and you can't argue that it is a minority) as long as there are issues that make the experience much worse for the whole user base.
They should've ironed out other more important kinks. "Controller region lock" is a non-existent issue because 1) GamePads are not sold separately; 2) the console doesn't support two GamePads as of now.
So has anyone actually tried using a imported controller after the update? Also doesn't the gamepad have a usb port so I wonder how easy it would just be to upload the different firmware onto it.
So does this mean the GamePad firmware can be updated? It could just be a safeguard. I remember when a few people bricked their Wiis importing Super Paper Mario (using a modchip to get round the region lock) as the game wanted a firmware update (Wii menu version on disc was a higher number so ask for update) and went and installed the US menu on EU Wiis leading to an Opera error message (why it happened).
That said the other reasons are interesting. Does this mean other consumer electronics with transmission capabilities are similarly region locked? Would it mean having to pay more (this tends to Nintendo's reason)?
Not really. Japanese firmware used a different filesystem that supported unicode filenames. A memory card imported would need formatting then work perfectly as any other. Is it region locking if it only works in one region at any time?
Heck, if you played Japanese games using a freeloader you could use the same memory card as everything else...unless the game had a unicode filename (e.g. Donkey Konga, Mr. Driller) in which case you could not save at all (and trying to do so would format it).
That said this makes me awfully curious about the Korean Gamecube. Was Japan region but had games in English...I guess unicode filename Japanese games would save fine.
Yeah, we'll see. Personally, I don't think 400k is very impressive in the month you launch (and the biggest shopping month of the year), especially if you weren't particularly supply constrained. I'd be surprised if the December numbers were very good. The word of mouth around the Wii U isn't very good.
Then why this reaction? Why hasn't anyone sat and thought, "I live in the US, if I can buy a controller within my region, and the controllers aren't really different from one another, why would I need a controller outside my region?"
I think people only saw "Region locked" and simply flipped.
The theme of a lot of posts in this thread, yours included, is that we shouldn't complain about one issue when there are bigger issues. That's dumb. We can complain about all of them at once. Smaller issues aren't suddenly non-issues just because a larger one exists.
You can complain about everything, but the point in complaining is actually improving things, not just complaining for the sake of complaining. Fixing the controller region-lock issue won't improve anything because no one can take advantage of it so far. Things like making mature games available to buy only for a few hours a day are much more important. I don't want Nintendo spending a single second resolving a non-issue as long as a serious issue is still present.
Furthermore, before complaining, we should understand the reason Nintendo did it. Is it just an anti-consumer corporate greed measure? I hardly doubt it. If GamePad has a firmware, I can see how it can be a problem as it has TV functions implemented in it. No one complains that we don't have a universal firmware instead of European, American and Japanese.
Why are people seeing this as an issue at all? This isn't Nintendo being evil or greedy. In the US at least, the consoles and the Gamepads fall under a metric TON of FCC regulations. One example is the fact that Nintendo is not licensed to use the radio frequencies the system uses to communicate with the Gamepad outdoors, which is one of the reasons for the limitation of how far the signal reaches. There are other laws regarding the amount of shielding that is needed in the controllers, laws about which frequencies can be used, and even laws about how much interference the controllers should accept from other sources.
That's just the US. I'd be pretty dang sure Japan has its own, different rules and regulations, same with Europe. This is most likely the biggest reason for the region locking.
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You can complain about everything, but the point in complaining is actually improving things, not just complaining for the sake of complaining. Fixing the controller region-lock issue won't improve anything because no one can take advantage of it so far. Things like making mature games available to buy only for a few hours a day are much more important. I don't want Nintendo spending a single second resolving a non-issue as long as a serious issue is still present.
Furthermore, before complaining, we should understand why the reason Nintendo did it. Is it just an anti-consumer corporate greed measure? I hardly doubt it. If GamePad has a firmware, I can see how it can be a problem as it has TV functions implemented in it. No one complains that we don't have a universal firmware instead of European, American and Japanese.
This is very true, we never knew the Wii U's firmware could be updated until this problem happened. It's very possible that the GamePad's region lock is a consequence of ensuring that the GamePad remains usable for the system it was originally meant to be played with. The truth is that we don't know. Until Nintendo comments, it is irresponsible to speculate and generate piles of slander for something we don't understand.
Why are people seeing this as an issue at all? This isn't Nintendo being evil or greedy. In the US at least, the consoles and the Gamepads fall under a metric TON of FCC regulations. One example is the fact that Nintendo is not licensed to use the radio frequencies the system uses to communicate with the Gamepad outdoors, which is one of the reasons for the limitation of how far the signal reaches. There are other laws regarding the amount of shielding that is needed in the controllers, laws about which frequencies can be used, and even laws about how much interference the controllers should accept from other sources.
That's just the US. I'd be pretty dang sure Japan has its own, different rules and regulations, same with Europe. This is most likely the biggest reason for the region locking.