Wii U making things hard for Nintendo fans?

Following its announcement that the Wii U will be region locked, Nintendo has revealed that the system's voice chat will be limited to certain games, and will only work through the use of third party microphone plugged into the GamePad. With the basic set having only 8gb of hard disk space and the buzz regarding the system's lack of improvement over the current generation's consoles, it makes one wonder if even catering to hardcore gamers will help market the system to people other than Nintendo fans.

I was this close to making this the first console that I get on launch, partially due to the interesting launch line-up but mainly because it's backwards compatible (which is extremely important in the first few months of a console's life when games are few), but the region locking turned me away.

Perhaps I'm spoilt because I own a PS3, and the ability to play games from different regions allowed me to freely import and play games that are not ported over to the US system. That plus the sour taste the Wii left me when Fatal Frame 4 did not reach the US, and Fatal Frame, or Project Zero 2 was only released in Europe. The last few great games for the Wii, The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles took so long to be ported I lost interest in the system and games.

I've been reading on the reasons for region locking. Apparently it prevents people from purchasing games from 'cheaper' regions and also from importing a new release before it's been ported to their region. The benefits to this are purely for the local publishers responsible for the porting. The first reason can't be solved otherwise, but if the local version is readily available, most people would buy that instead, considering the language issues. As for the second reason, if developers can control the sale of their games and have world-wide releases, can't they also ensure the ports of different regions are already done before the release of the games?

It's curious that during this age of digital distribution, blue-ray and online connectivity that Nintendo would still stick to these 2 generations-old practices. Is this company really the innovative company that  brought us the touchscreen and motion control?