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Comment by nottorp | Hacker News Reader

As far as i know Nintendo is the only console maker still having region locks and being extremely fussy about transferring your purchases when your hardware dies/is replaced.

I'd call THAT anti consumer.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but that's the impression I got from reading here and there and the reason I don't own Nintendo products.

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Nintendo’s portable systems (going back to the Game Boy and including the Switch) have never had region locks, on the logic that somebody might want to buy a new game while traveling. The consoles (except for Switch) do, though.

The 3ds did have region locks on it. I think the rest didn't.

Funny enough, that's when I wanted to buy a Nintendo portable. 3D without glasses seemed interesting. Then I noticed that not many games are available in eastern europe and I wasn't willing to jump through hoops to give them my money.

3DS was region locked - I had to import a Japanese 3DS to play the Japanese version of Persona Q2 (or I could have used CFW, but I didn't want to risk the downloaded content I have).

The Nintendo Switch is not region locked. You can play any game from any region on it.

Moving to new hardware is more complicated than it needs to be but is not restrictive.

Ok that's new. I last checked when they had the ... whatever the first console with motion controllers was called.

So are you absolutely sure that I can buy Nintendo stuff today and get games from anywhere in the world? Because my local selection is laughably small and crappy, and combined with region locks it meant it's not worth the trouble.

>whatever the first console with motion controllers was called.

Nintendo Puerile Joke (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4953650.stm).

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

The Wii is the console you are thinking of. And that console came out in 2006. So I'm surprised you decided that things haven't changed in 14 years.

> So are you absolutely sure that I can buy Nintendo stuff today and get games from anywhere in the world?

Yes, absolutely sure. You just need to create an eShop account for each region. There are countless articles on how to do this.

Absolutely certain. It's in Nintendo's FAQs[1] and I have played physical games from the EU, US, and Japan on my EU Switch, and have accounts for both the UK and Japanese eShops.

[1] https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Nintendo-Switch/Regional-...

> The Wii is the console you are thinking of. And that console came out in 2006. So I'm surprised you decided that things haven't changed in 14 years.

I didn't grow up with gameboys but with the zx spectrum, I don't have a childhood attachment to Nintendo. Once in a while (3-5 years) I think it would be good to check what they offer, but usually there's a hoop i have to jump through and it also requires spending money on a new console in addition to my PS3/4 so...

> So are you absolutely sure that I can buy Nintendo stuff today and get games from anywhere in the world?

> Yes, absolutely sure. You just need to create an eShop account for each region. There are countless articles on how to do this.

I was thinking of physical purchases :)

> So are you absolutely sure that I can buy Nintendo stuff today and get games from anywhere in the world?

Yes, I have a UK switch that I got (it was the diablo bundle), I have a uk switch account and a us switch account. Diablo works fine. All my us purchased switch games (physical) and downloaded games from the us store on this uk switch.

I've had Japanese and European cartridges in my Switch without issues. (Haven't tried American cartridges yet despite owning four.)

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