Nintendo Life: Nintendo Region Locks Consoles To Get More Hardware Sales, Says Mitchell Corp Boss

[TheWPCTraveler]

Aielyn said:

TheWPCTraveler said:
Yeah. My bet is that these people simply don't understand the market.

My bet is that this guy is full of it, and Nintendo's reason for region-locking has nothing to do with hardware sales, since Nintendo makes a lot more off their software than their hardware (especially with the 3DS selling at a loss initially). And before someone points out revenue, I'm going to point out that hardware profit is unit revenue minus unit cost minus development cost, and hardware unit cost is quite high, whereas software profit is unit revenue minus development cost - so selling more units of software boosts profit significantly, whereas boosting hardware sales only slightly boosts profits.

There are a few reasons why Nintendo might be region-locking. It could even be a perceived opportunity to make more money through regional pricing differences. But it's not because they think people will buy more systems, I'm about 99% certain of that.

Read the bolded, and you'll get why I put it in!

It's still an anti-consumer decision to give out needlessly high prices in PAL regions (though sales taxes are different), and starve them of some games (localization  perhaps?), though.