Games sell well in Japan and the US.  Games sell poorly in Australia.  They risk losing more potential sales by releasing in a region where they won't sell well before a region where they will sell well.

Huh?  Not quite sure what you are getting at here but I'd be willing to bet that home console and game sales are much higher per capita in Australia than Japan, certainly this generation.  Regardless I don't see how releasing in Australia first, which according to you has poor game sales, could lead to a greater loss of potential sales.  We are a small market, even if every single potential customer pirates a particular game, it will have little effect on the overall sales of the game, because we are such a small market.

If I have to wait even one day longer for Mario Galaxy 2 and Zelda Wii because of this guy...!

Australian here - "SON OF A BITCH"

Haha, good riddance and suits him well. Well done Ninty.

say the game comes out the 14th in the US, and the 1st in Australia. Person x in Australia pirates the game and posts it online on the 1st. People in the US notice it is available (chat on forums for example) and they may not normally pirate games, but they give it a shot because they can't wait for the biggest game of the decade. All of a sudden you lose a bunch of sales from the larger region (US) because someone pirated it in the smaller region (Australia).

Had the game released 1st in NA, those people who normally wouldn't pirate a game would have just bought it the same day it was pirated and wouldn't have known about the pirated copy since no one was talking about it yet.

Obviously there is a downside in that Australia may pirate, but when you are talking 5m sales in a region vs. 500k, even with a higher piracy rate they would lose less sales in Australia.

Of course, none of this means the game should release months later, all it really means is that Nintendo should release at the same time or shortly (3 days with typically tuesday in NA, and friday in PAL release schedule) after in Australia if they are concerned it is a major leak of copies.

pwned

Good. He deserves it.

I don't buy this for a moment.  There are people who normally pirate and those that don't.  I doubt a bunch of people modded their Wii because they heard there was an early version of NSMBWii available.  If people didn't get it from this guy, they would have waited a couple of days and gotten it from someone else.

Also, this guy lives in the very suburb where I grew up:) so I know where to find him if future release dates are affected:)

I don't know, I was just theorizing. I've seen plenty of people on this forum claim they only pirated a game because they got it 2 weeks early and they will be buying it once it comes out. Who knows if they actually do buy it or not.