Thanks to Joel Johnson from Wired News we now have confirmation from Nintendo’s VP of Marketing Perrin Kaplan that ALL first-party Wii games will be without region locks. This means that all games made by Nintendo for the Wii will be playable on Wii systems from all regions.

This is what Perrin Kaplan had to say about the question “Will the Wii be region free?”

“Yes. Like the Nintendo DS, the Wii will be able to play games from other regions, such as Japan, without any restriction.” Kaplan implied there might be a region lock that publishers would be able to flip on, but it doesn’t sound like the first-party titles from Nintendo will be restricted.

Although this doesn’t mean that all third-party games will be region free Nintendo is setting a good example that we can only hope others will follow.

[Update 1: According to Nintendo UK, it now appears that all Wii titles will be region locked, Read]