For a series of press conferences with the purpose of finally spilling all the beans, there seem to be an awful lot of beans still unpilled. I’m looking forward to buying the Wii, the money has been in the bank for months and the second I can reserve it, it’s paid in full. Thing is, questions abound.

For example- is it region free? Nintendo doesn’t even know the answer to this question! Perrin Kaplan, NoA’s vice president of stuff, says yes, region free all the way unless a publisher chooses to enable the region lock themselves. Nintendo UK’s general manager David Yarnton, on the other hand, is very clear that region encoding is very much in place. I think they may be talking about the same thing, actually, with region encoding definitely in the system (Yarnton) but only in place if a publisher chooses to enable it (Kaplan). Honestly though, who the hell knows? I say it’s a ploy by Yarnton to stop UK importers from blowing off the $338.60 price for the USA’s friendlier $250, but at this point it could be anything. On the plus side, there hasn’t been a Nintendo console yet it hasn’t been brain-dead easy to circumvent region lockout on.

The next question is- What format are the games on? It’s not DVD, but rather “A single self-loading media bay will play single- or double-layered 12-centimeter optical discs…”. That could mean anything, really.

How powerful is it? The system specs are online, but there hasn’t been any real interpretation of them yet. I like the looks of the games I’ve seen, but then again I don’t ask for much either. Keep things running at a good framerate and don’t let the textures blur and I’m happy. But the Wii is constantly referred to as Gamecube 1.5 by everyone except Nintendo, and they aren’t talking. There’s nothing wrong with a “Look at the games and decide for yourself” attitude, but some solid info in actual English wouldn’t hurt.

How will online gaming work? What’s the holdup on the web browser, and why isn’t the freeware Opera browser free on Wii? What’s up with charging the US almost $40 more than Japan, basically forcing everyone who buys the Wii to buy Wii Sports with it? And what the hell is up with charing Europe $88 more than the US for the exact same bundle?

I’m really looking forward to the Wii, it’s my most anticipated gaming purchase this year. I’m just very disappointed at the way Nintendo is handling it’s pre-launch press. Date, price, and a few bells and whistles are all very well and good, but we got that from Sony back in May for the PS3. With only two months to go until launch, we shouldn’t have so many questions left.