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It turns out that the both the Wii itself, and first party games will be region locked. This comes as a blow to many who felt that Nintendo made a good decision in keeping the Wii region-free. Nintendo of America’s Vice-President of Marketing & Corporate Affairs Perrin Kaplan stated that “Like the Nintendo DS, the Wii will be able to play games from other regions, such as Japan, without any restriction.” However, a US spokesperson told Joystiq that the Wii will be region locked;

“We’ve heard conflicting reports from lots of folks out there, but can tell you that Wii will be region encoded, as will first-party software.“

Similarly, a UK spokesperson told Gameindustry.biz that “We are region-locked”, and that the US part of Nintendo had made a mistake saying otherwise. So it seems that editors at Wired’s Game|Life miss-interpreted Kaplan’s comments, and thought that by saying that software may be region-free, she meant that the console was region-free as well. But this still contradicts what the US spokesperson told Joystiq, that first-party games will be region locked. Either way, the console itself will be region locked, and most likely the games will be too. So no importing of games from Japan!

[via IGN]