iamaustrian said:
blame piracy, not nintendo
At this point I'd almost think it'd be an issue with connectivity and online services, not to mention interaction between differently-regioned titles. Nintendo's very big on guaranteeing a consistent experience anymore, which can be extremely tricky when you throw localizations by third parties into the mix.
It was one thing when you could just throw a GBA title into your Micro and not worry about connectivity for the most part, the game pretty much started and stopped with that cartridge, and often multiplayer didn't work correctly between regions, but for the most part it was a wholly-delivered product. Now think about the average online-enabled game today. What happens when you buy a Japanese game, does it talk to the American online service, or the Japanese one? What about the reverse? Does the game's StreetPass mode work with the same game from different regions, will it introduce strange bugs or gibberish text? Cross-region compatibility introduces a need for a lot more testing, and a cost of development increase, and still may have issues with unplanned or late localization of products that introduce changes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm for region free all the way. But it does seem like there's a much greater potential for complications now that there's so much more system and network cross-talk going on.