Video Game Discussion Thread

[Kodokami]

[Mr Bekkler]

Crap, so Nintendo of America isn't releasing Xenoblade stateside. Nor The Last Story for that matter.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/117/1179222p1.html

Apparently that giant buzzing sound you hear is every US citizen downloading the Wii emulator...

It's about that time. This is quite disheartening. However, Wii emulation seems to offer 720p and 1080p, and I can connect my computer to my projector, so the only difference will be they won't get my money. Shame for them.

[FaustWolf]

Wow, the rumor mill has it that Europe might be getting The Last Story too! Considering how well British voice acting goes over in games, maybe this is a win-win situation after all.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Grrrr... I read this news today on IGN. A shame they aren't coming Stateside, despite the fan outcry. I wonder what their logic is. Good companies should really meet the demands of their consumer-base.

Hey, maybe my MBA is turning out useful after all!

[1st Mate Bob]

Grrrr... I read this news today on IGN. A shame they aren't coming Stateside, despite the fan outcry. I wonder what their logic is. Good companies should really meet the demands of their consumer-base.

JRPGs on the Wii have had a hard time selling 200,000 copies in the US.
Call of Duty 3 and CoD: World at War both sold over 1,000,000 copies each on the Wii, and CoD: Black Ops has sold over 600,000 so far.
Games like "Just Dance" have sold over 2,000,000 copies.

Logically, which is the best investment? There's no money in JRPGs in the states. Nintendo is a business; money comes first.

[alfadorredux]

The problem is one that's infected most other areas of the entertainment industry as well: big companies aren't interested in anything that would bring them only a modest profit. In this case, if they've already got an English-language localization created for the European release, they could run off 50000-100000 copies with at most a couple of minor tweaks, make a single press release to get the word out, price it slightly higher than the average Wii game to offset the lost economies of scale, and probably still make some money off the portion of the hard-core JRPG crowd that owns a Wii. Thing is, because it would only make them a few hundred thousand rather than millions of $$$, they're not going to bother. (It isn't as though creating a smaller number of units for a less popular game prevents them from putting out the million-plus sellers, y'know?)

[Jutty]

How am I supposed to take Nintendo seriously when they say they are bringing content to the core gamer with the WiiU when things like this happen. After all the fans speaking with their wallets by preordering Xenoblade on Amazon and getting it to the #1 spot in the gaming section of Amazon NoA basically tells gamers "lol no." I was excited about WiiU but now I don't think I have any intentions of purchasing one until NoA can get the games I'm interested in to me.

[Jutty]

Grrrr... I read this news today on IGN. A shame they aren't coming Stateside, despite the fan outcry. I wonder what their logic is. Good companies should really meet the demands of their consumer-base.

JRPGs on the Wii have had a hard time selling 200,000 copies in the US.
Call of Duty 3 and CoD: World at War both sold over 1,000,000 copies each on the Wii, and CoD: Black Ops has sold over 600,000 so far.
Games like "Just Dance" have sold over 2,000,000 copies.

Logically, which is the best investment? There's no money in JRPGs in the states. Nintendo is a business; money comes first.

It has already been translated... What do they need to invest?

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

JRPGs on the Wii have had a hard time selling 200,000 copies in the US. Call of Duty 3 and CoD: World at War both sold over 1,000,000 copies each on the Wii, and CoD: Black Ops has sold over 600,000 so far. Games like "Just Dance" have sold over 2,000,000 copies.

Logically, which is the best investment? There's no money in JRPGs in the states. Nintendo is a business; money comes first.

That's true, but Nintendo is known for porting games that commonly sell only 200,000 copies. I mean, much of the Wii library is pretty weak. This has been the case since the days of the Gamecube. Nintendo itself reaps massive profits from a few key franchises and third party development fees.

In addition, the long-term ramifications of such business decisions can actually be disastrous in the long-term scheme of profits. Customers can become disenchanted. Case in point, I have completely quit buying products from Apple because of their abusive customer practices. Not necessarily always the case, but a denied customer can be a dangerous enemy.

[FaustWolf]

I vote for Boo as new CEO of Nintendo.

I wonder if sheer marketing costs are the culprit from NoA's perspective? If so, I think they're underestimating the amount of viral attention Xenoblade has gotten thus far. Especially with the Project Rainfall coverage -- I mean, damn, that's the kind of free oxygen a product seller can only dream of. I wonder if marketing and MBA courses actually discuss this sort of thing, or did at the time the people running the show received their training?

Nintendo ought to let an indie publisher purchase the rights to distribute said games in the US, and reap licensing fees while letting the smaller publisher bear the risk. It seems to be the most sensible thing to do from a game theory/expected profit maximization perspective, IMO. Why not let everyone just win?

[tushantin]

Why not let everyone just win?

Because for some reason, every corporation runs with an only me attitude.

[1st Mate Bob]

Grrrr... I read this news today on IGN. A shame they aren't coming Stateside, despite the fan outcry. I wonder what their logic is. Good companies should really meet the demands of their consumer-base.

JRPGs on the Wii have had a hard time selling 200,000 copies in the US.
Call of Duty 3 and CoD: World at War both sold over 1,000,000 copies each on the Wii, and CoD: Black Ops has sold over 600,000 so far.
Games like "Just Dance" have sold over 2,000,000 copies.

Logically, which is the best investment? There's no money in JRPGs in the states. Nintendo is a business; money comes first.

It has already been translated... What do they need to invest?

Translated, yes, but localized for Europeans. They would have to localize it for the U.S. as well as whatever tweaks they need to make to the DVD's due to the consoles being region locked. I am fairly certain NoA isn't even able to borrow the European translation and use it as a starting point for their own, meaning they'd have to start with the Japanese version like everyone else.

JRPGs on the Wii have had a hard time selling 200,000 copies in the US. Call of Duty 3 and CoD: World at War both sold over 1,000,000 copies each on the Wii, and CoD: Black Ops has sold over 600,000 so far. Games like "Just Dance" have sold over 2,000,000 copies.

Logically, which is the best investment? There's no money in JRPGs in the states. Nintendo is a business; money comes first.

That's true, but Nintendo is known for porting games that commonly sell only 200,000 copies. I mean, much of the Wii library is pretty weak. This has been the case since the days of the Gamecube. Nintendo itself reaps massive profits from a few key franchises and third party development fees.

However, what do they do after they make money off of the key franchises? With the explosion that casual games have made on Facebook and the App store, Nintendo seems like they're taking a "me too" initiative.  They invest in casual games now, because those sell more than hardcore epics. That was pretty much the whole point of the Wii, if you remember. Bring gaming to non-gamers. How do you do that? By making/porting games for non-gamers.

[Syna]

Steam is having a sale, guys. For ten days.

Use this information wisely.

For my part, I have partaken, and will probably give a trusted friend my cards until the sale is over.  

[Kodokami]

http://www.achrongame.com/site/index.php

A new time travel game? I'm interested.

[Romana]

Crap, so Nintendo of America isn't releasing Xenoblade stateside. Nor The Last Story for that matter.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/117/1179222p1.html

Apparently that giant buzzing sound you hear is every US citizen downloading the Wii emulator...

Homebrew Channel + Gecko OS or USB Loader allows you to bypass region checks. So it's probably worth importing a PAL copy. It's what I do with Wii games that take longer to come out here/don't get released in Europe. Freeloaders used to work too, but Nintendo blocked those with a patch...