Has anyone got into this situation???
I bought the wii console and few games here in Basel. However when my husband had gone to US, he picked up few games and when we tried to play it here, we are getting "unable to read the disc" error.
Anyone has any suggesstions about how to make it work? are there any work arounds?

thanks

From what I can tell, the Wii supports region coding, just like DVD players, and the US and Europe are (as usual) different regions. Check the case to see if it mentions what region the game is designed for.

Yup, the Wii is region coded. American and European models are incompatible, although it might be possible to get it "fixed".

I am fairly sure that Wii media is mastered for the display standard for the region. US Wii games need a US Wii console to display on a NTSC TV. Swiss and UK Wii games need a PAL Wii console to play on a PAL TV.

Does anyone know if the PS3 is region coded as well? Was planning to pick up some games for the hubby when in Canada, the PS3 was bought here.

Thanks!

It is possible to buy a mod chip that can be installed inside the Wii console that will enable you to play Wii games made for a different region. However, it is possible to render the Wii console completely useless if the game downloads a firmware update over the internet for a Region 1 console and installs it on a Region 2 console.

Mod chips are not supported by Nintendo as they were developed primarily to allow pirate copies of games to be played.

And your warranty will no longer be valid.

But if you dont connect to the internet with the Wii, the firmware wont be downloaded right?

It is partially. I understand that PS3 games bought in one region can usually be played on a console made for another region but I have not tried it myself.

However, DVDs and Blu-ray movies must match the console's region code to play. Only Region 2 Blu-ray movies will play in a Swiss Playstation3.

As long as you never connect it to the internet or use a game that includes a required firmware update that has been recorded onto the disc by the publisher for your convenience.

I got my WII "fixed" so that I can play European games and my wife has fun with Asian releases. However, you will not only be careful not to download a firmware upgrade, but you also loose some fun features as playing online with the WII (in some games you can play online against friends who have the same game...)

Pretty much all games and most Blu-Rays are region-free. Running a quick Google search is usually enough to find out if a particular Blu-Ray is region-free or not (sites like axelmusic.com keep track).

Region-locked PS3 games are so rare that it's honestly a non-issue, it's limited to region-specific releases like sports games that only have licensing agreements in a particular country, for example. But all major releases are region-free. The only eventual problem may be region-locked online servers, but so what, you'll just have to play against Josh from America and not Friedrich from Germany.

I've seen a disc for the wii in Fnac which costs about 30chf and claims to let you play all regions games on your wii. I guess it is a software hack and imagine it would avoid your warranty and disable online game play. It is up to you to decide whether you want a warranty and online play, or half price games from the states.

Actually that may not be the case shortly, the rumour is that Sony will begin region encoding games again for the PS3, the system is built with region encoding as standard and up until now Sony have allowed developers to device if they will use the region encoding feature or not.

Region locked online servers do make a difference to online play due to latency in communications. Generally servers are allocated by region so you are not just playing against Freidrich from Germany but you are also playing on a server hosted in Europe rather than in the US.

This has been the rumour for a while and it never materialized. I doubt it ever will. Any attemps to region-lock certain things (demos on PSN, etc.) have been met with such outcry that most publishers won't bother with it. In any case, at the moment, there's no danger in buying a PS3 game overseas. That's a factor, yeah. But most games like Call of Duty 4 and LittleBigPlanet have interconnected online servers.

Talking about region encoding, I see the Playstation store additions for Little Big Planet are also region locked. I have a US LBP and a Swiss store account, i can happily browse, download free / paid for LBP content and it simply never shows up in game.

Happily you can get around this by registering a new PSN ID with a bogus US address for the free content and once the PSN prepaid cards become generally available you should be able to get hold of USD cards and buy the content for the US games.