Wii....Region free?

[Sniper1515]

I am living in germany right now and can buy the wii on the military post for 250 dollars or buy it on the german economy for 250 Euro (exchange rate is about 1.60 $ to the euro) I know the deal is to buy it on post but in order to rent games we have to go on the economy, my question is.. does anyone know if the german games will work on the US Wii? I have tried to find something on the internet but all I can find is old reports from before the wii was released.

Edit......the german games are PAL

[Premonition]

like all consoles some game are some are not. In the wii`s case i heard you might brick it playing the wrong region games in it. Dont know if thats true though.

[Sirex]

The Wii scotts getting for XMas is danish, same region, but UK games work on it no problem, but there is info out there saying they are not region restricted...

I can not sware on it thou.

[Premonition]

Remember when Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan told Wired News that first-party Wii games would be free of regional shackles? Well, it turns out that she never received the internal memo stating the exact opposite: The Wii will not be region-free. Not even a little. Some confusion arose after David "there's no DS redesign" Yarnton told UK press that the system would indeed be region-locked. Were Kaplan's comments misinterpreted somehow? After all, having region-free games and a region-free system are two very different things. We took the issue to a Nintendo US spokesperson and received the clarification we desired, unpleasant as it was.

"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."

It's a segmented world after all.
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/15/wii-not-even-remotely-region-free/

some games might be region free though, not sure. Usually its the dev or publisher who decides.

[Sniper1515]

all the info i can find contradicts everything else......some say the console is region coded and the games aren't and vise versa. also.....dose anyone know what the difference is between third party and first party games? some of the info i found said that first party games are not region coded and third part are?!

[Premonition]

first party is like mario, zelda etc etc... 3rd party is like madden 08, smackdown vs raw 2k8 etc etc.
3rd party is usually outside devs that make games

[Sniper1515]

Thanks Premonition.........if its true about third party games being region coded then I dont know if it will be worth saving the 50 dollars by buying it on post