I've never sell my consoles, so it doesn't matter to me that much.

I can somewhat understand where Nintendo is coming from. In the past Nintendo has taken import stores to court for breaking their release dates by importing games from other regions. Nintendo has claimed that people importing the game will not buy it in their region.

I can understand this. Nintendo uses profits from each region to run their regional facilities and to decide whether to bring a game to a specific region. Nintendo relies on sales data often to decide whether to bring a game stateside or Europe.

Say 500K gamers in Europe import their game from US, then the game is released and sells only 150k in Europe. Well Nintendo sees a huge sales rate in the US but not in Europe. They may decide to not bring future installations to Europe. Another example American's import 1-million copies of a game from Japan, it launches stateside and sells only a few thousand. Well Nintendo won't localize that franchise anymore. This would be especially bad for Australia who's market isn't as big as other markets, Nintendo could stop localizing many games altogether meaning Australians would have to import. Same goes for many small countries in Europe and elsewhere, if Nintendo sees less demand they produce and localize less games.

Another example is the amount of copies Nintendo provides to a specific region. I know Nintendo monitors how many copies sell in which cities and countries. Then based on demand they supply units. Say everyone in your city imported the game, now Nintendo sees no demand so they stop shipping the game to your region.

Its better for Nintendo to know exactly where and how much their games are selling. Importation makes it very hard to track where the games are actually selling.

True, if the different divisions of Nintendo are trying to optimize their own profits and not cannibalize one another, though you'd think Nintendo would be encouraging some USA folks to buy Japanese games in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge sorta way, since JP games are more expensive even outside the currency conversion, and made in a stronger currency overall

Oh well... not a big deal. People that were planning to buy the 3DS will still buy it, even if it is region lock.

I was thinking in the lines of, a customer buys a 3ds, then travels somewhere else and tries to buy games for it. If it didn't have a warning on the box, he might be end up being ne unhappy customr. So it's good that Ninty is doing this, possible less issues for them as well.

@dsister: that's like asking a gamer who imports certain japanese games to buy a console just for that. So yeah it sucks if you import games. It won't affect me in the least cuz I don't import games (well maybe a few like the handhled Bleach games) but not many. I do however know some who import a great deal of japanese games, in addition to western games. Bottom line is region locks are stupid for handhelds, hope others won't follow than and who knows maybe most games will be playable in several regions.

I think anyone who imports a heavy amount of games should be fine importing the system too.  My import happy friends did that with PS1, DC, PS2, Wii and 360.  Saturn and GameCube had pretty simple region switch mods, SNES/Genesis/N64 even easier (and pass throughs you could buy), GB/TCD/GBA/DS/PSP/PS3 were all region free, everything else doesn't really have much worth importing.

Or, maybe this'll just speed up 3DS hacking.  I wouldn't mind, I'd like to play Tales of the Abyss 3D in english. ;)

I'm sure they might end up buying the extra console, but will they be ok with it? Not many would I imagine, at least not until the price comes down.

But yea, chances are this will speed it up for sure :)

"...If you are in doubt, Nintendo recommends that you only purchase Nintendo 3DS software in the region where purchased your Nintendo 3DS system”

That has to mean not all games will only work in their region. Add the "possibility" part and it clearly sounds like there are slightly different hardware/firmwares and games can either be compatible or not to each, doesn't sound like universal region lock at all.

@joecool7  thats all well and good, but lets be real here a good amount of games that are being imported never seel the light of day outside of Japan anyway. So I dont see how Ninty is being hurt in this way, hell thats more money in their pocket. The Europeans are really screwed because from what i hear they have to wait even longer for games

I was somewhat puzzled by that as well. If every game is region locked then why don't they just say that you have to buy the games and the console from the same region. It really sounds like region-locked games are an exception and not the rule.

Either they worded it bad and every game will be region locked, or it just means that some features may not work correctly.