Nintendo held a Q&A session for it's investors and there Iwata answered a question regarding the firm's policy about region locking. A user of Neogaf -forum has presented an unofficial translation, which confirms that the company is looking into the possibility of removing region locking from it's hardware:
"The game business has a history of taking a very long time with localization among other things, such as having to deal with various issues of marketing in each particular country, or games that have made use of licensed content that did not apply globally, and had all kinds of circumstances, so to say, that region-locking has existed due to circumstances on the sellers' side rather than for the sake of the customers.
Iwata concluded that unlocking the regional codes would also benefit Nintendo, but there are still various problems to be solved in the matter. Meanwhile PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are already offering region free gaming, so it would definitely be best for Nintendo to follow suit. Gamers are getting used to be able to play games from other regions without problems, so region locking can have a negative impact on the company's image.