Thursday, June 30, 2011

Nintendo of America gives the finger to Xenoblade, Pandora's Tower and The Last Story fans

In response to the recent campaign that called for a stateside release of The Last Story, Pandora's Tower and Xenoblade, Nintendo of America posted the following (rather annoyingly cheerful, if you ask me) message on its Facebook page yesterday afternoon:

Thank you for your enthusiasm. We promised an update, so here it is. We never say “never,” but we can confirm that there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time. Thanks so much for your passion, and for being such great fans!




The Redmond, Wash.-based company also aimed this tweet at folks foolishly clamoring for that trio of Japanese RPGs:

Thanks for being such incredible fans! Unfortunately, there continues to be no plans for NOA to release these 3 games right now.

Really, they could have just flipped us the bird, told us to buy Wii Play: Motion and been done with it, don't you think?

(Via gonintendo.com)

6 comments:

Viewtiful_Justin said...

Open wide, America. It's time for Nintendo to shovel more crap down your throats. God forbid they give us something we WANT. No...it's another game featuring pet horses...or a painfully broken waggle-fest for $4.99.

Fine...don't spend your money on translating games, Nintendo. But...if you're already translating them for European audiences, WTF?! Why on earth wouldn't they come here, too?! Does it cost too much to ship them overseas? I mean...WHO THE HELL IS IN CHARGE OVER THERE?!

Bryan Ochalla said...

Actually, I don't think it's fine that they're not localizing games. The Wii is Nintendo's most successful console to date, and it has seen its best sales in North America -- they should have localized every possible first-party game this generation, in my opinion.

As such, it's just salt in the wounds when they do go ahead and localize a game -- like Xenoblade -- and only release it in Australia and Europe, for instance.

I'm not sure why Nintendo of America does this, unfortunately. Some have said it's because the company's American branch is both lazy ("Hey, Wii Play: Motion will sell a few million copies without advertising it. Why release something that would require marketing and only sell a tenth of that?) and scared of being on the receiving end of Nintendo of Japan's wrath (should they choose to release a game like Xenoblade and it fails to sell enough copies). I can't say if that's true or not, though.

Also, it's hard to tell who actually makes these decisions. Some say Nintendo of Japan has almost full control of localization decisions, some say they have most of the control (they decide which games can and can't be released and each territory chooses which of the approved games to release). So, it sounds like in this case only some of the blame can be laid on Nintendo of America's shoulders.

Regardless, it pisses me off, to be honest. I really like Nintendo and its systems and games, and these kinds of decisions are not only confounding but infuriating. Rather than support, once in a while at least, the folks who actually buy games for the Wii, they focus their support on folks who likely bought the system for Wii Sports and maybe picked up Wii Fit and/or Mario Kart Wii alongside it. Why show them all of the love?

This kind of thing isn't going to cause me to not buy a 3DS or the Wii U or anything overly dramatic like that, but it'll certainly keep me from feeling at all guilty when I mod those systems -- like I modded my Wii -- so I can play all of the games they can't be bothered to bring to our shores.

Viewtiful_Justin said...

I've been a die-hard Nintendo fan my whole life. This is the first time since the no-rpg era of the N64 that I've questioned them like this.

I think it's Nintendo of America's job to take care of its American fans. It's certainly NOT doing its job.

Bryan Ochalla said...

Oh, I agree, Justin. Sadly, I think the best we can hope for at this point is some kind of amazing change of heart on the part of the company's management -- or just a plain ol' change of management, I guess.

Viewtiful_Justin said...

You might want to check out my blog today. I'm registering my discontent. And...no...as far as I know, it's not REALLY a picture of him...but it looks eerily similar.

http://justin-difazzio.blogspot.com/2011/06/get-back-to-work.html

Bryan Ochalla said...

Thanks for the heads up. Just checked it out and I agree 100 percent.

I don't think it's him, by the way, but does it matter? It's likely he's doing something remarkably similar right now...