The Nintendo Switch is a region-free console, which means you can buy games from Japan and import them to play on the Nintendo Switch you bought in North America. This is the first time Nintendo has really embraced the region-free concept, as consoles as far back as the GameCube were region-locked and you’d need region hardware to play those games.
While there are plenty of benefits to consumers with region-free consoles, it turns out there’s also a huge upside for developers. Developer Image & Form, creator of the SteamWorld series, answered questions on Reddit yesterday about the Nintendo Switch and the process of developing games for the new system, but one of the surprises they revealed is that developers only have to submit one version of their game for all regions, now.
Now that Nintendo has embraced region-free publishing we save lots of time since we only need to submit one version of the game for the entire world (instead of multiple versions to cover all regions). It saves us months of paperwork!
It’s nice to know that developers save a lot of work with a region-free console, too!
SteamWorld Dig for Wii U – $9.99