Monday, August 01, 2011

NEWS Xenoblade Chronicles - European Import, Region Restriction

NCS Product Synopsis
«©NCSX» Late in June 2011, Nintendo issued a statement concerning the release of Xenoblade Chronicles stateside which read:

Nintendo
: Thank you for your enthusiasm. We promised an update, so here it is. We never say “never,” but we can confirm that there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time. Thanks so much for your passion, and for being such great fans!

   The other two games that Ninty has no plans on bringing to North America are The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower. We've received a large number of inquiries regarding importing the game but please note: Wii games are region-protected and won't play on consoles from other regions.

   Gamers may try importing Xenoblade Chronicles and boot it with the Freeloader region-circumvention disc from Datel but if your Wii’s firmware has been updated recently, the Freeloader won’t work anymore. One solution is firmware hacking which allows the use of import games from Japan and Europe on the Wii. In the case of Xenoblade Chronicles which is a PAL-format game, please be advised that not all PAL Wii games can be forced to play on NTSC Wii consoles and NTSC televisions despite the firmware hacks that are available in the wild. Due to this restriction, NCS isn't supplying the game to stateside customers but we'll test Xenoblade when it's released to check compatibility. If we're able to boot the game on an NTSC Wii console connected to an NTSC television and view it in color, we will consider importing the game for our customers in North America.

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