There used to be a time when one or two grey-imports in your collection was the true mark of being a gamer. Waiting months for a game to finally appear, or in many cases never actually making it, paying over the odds and circumventing territory lockouts on the machines themselves, was often the only option available to the more serious gamer - not that TVG condones interfering with hardware, you're always left with one odd bit!

But in this day and age of an increasingly smaller worldwide market and shorter release periods (with the exception of Square-Enix), grey imports aren't necessarily as much of a necessity to gamers as they used to be.

With the PSP and Nintendo DS continuing the handheld tradition of being region-free, Sony's confirmation that the PlayStation3 would follow suit came as a small surprise, given their notoriously hard stance on grey-importers.

IGN recently had the chance to put the question of territory-lockout to Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan, who managed to dodge providing a definite answer with the skilful poise that we've come to expect from Nintendo executives.

"Clearly, the success of Nintendo DS has offered a lot of lessons about what works in the marketplace - and we certainly intend to keep our fans satisfied. For the Wii system, we are finalizing all the relevant details and will be making announcements in the coming months."

The situation is muddled even further as Kaplan appears to backtrack on the slight suggestion and discusses the worldwide nature of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection instead, "We will share a lot of ways people can play globally, regionally, without boundaries. You're right that the region-free approach has proved to be a successful and attractive feature for Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection on Nintendo DS - we have even blown the doors off our own anticipated numbers! Cost, ease-of-use and player privacy are the three things that were a focus for us with Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Those priorities also will apply to the Wii system."

So there you have it, with a Press Release deliberately issued to whip up the fanboys and the continued stance against releasing too many details, surely it can't be too long before Nintendo decides to come out with what the fans want to know.