I'm surprised they don't do a direct sale from their own website for titles they think won't sell. They put it up as a $60 preorder with the caveat that they will only localize the game (and then you'll be charged and shipped the game) if they receive a set amount of preorders. No risk at all because they won't start the process of localization until they know it will make them a profit.
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NOA localizer insists Xenoblade too risky, defends Wii U naming
- Thread starter Agent Unknown
- Start date
3,000 lines of dialogue for battles alone and a fully voiced story, 400+ quests and lots and lots of items, weapons, armor, monsters and NPCs. If you want 100% completion of the game you're going to be spending at least around 300 or so hours.
The game is huge with a heavy amount of text as you'd expect from a big RPG.
Finale Fireworker
Member
Honestly, being localized by NoE did a great thing for Xenoblade's western identity. The British accents really give it a distinct flair that would simply not exist with an Amerixan dub.
Xenoblade's voice work is famous and iconic.
Xenoblade's voice work is famous and iconic.
skLaFarebear
Member
This statement sounds like its coming from someone who's gotten the same "What's wrong with you?" or "You don't like money?" tweet/email from the same people for years and is annoyed at constantly seeing it.
Nothing he said here was really that wrong, but its said in a pretty bitter tone. And a reason it sold as well as it did was because of Operation Rainfall and all the podcasts/sites talking about it and the games they wanted to bring west.
Nothing he said here was really that wrong, but its said in a pretty bitter tone. And a reason it sold as well as it did was because of Operation Rainfall and all the podcasts/sites talking about it and the games they wanted to bring west.
I agree! The acting was superb and very memorable and identifiable by being so distinct from the normal stuff we get. They even got some famous voices for it like Jenna Coleman who now plays Clara Oswald in Doctor Who.
CertifiedFP
Member
Think the case there was that it didn't exactly light up the charts in Japan, and some of the higher ups at SonyCE were questioning the game's quality.
Note that Sony's tone on Demon's Souls since has been that it was a mistake of them not to localize it themselves, not a belligerent comment about it being too risky.
You're right, I'm glad NoE took on the project for that reason among others.
Definite agree, I mean I could have lived with the standard set of American VAs dubbing this, but thanks to [dumb, nasally voice] NoE taking the fall [normal voice], we got a unique and iconic voiceover which makes the dub definitely stand out from the rest.
Originally they were forecasting 15,000 sales. That sounds like a risky venture to me.
You can bet someone at Sony made the same belligerent comment about it being risky at first but now not so much in hindsight which he's pretty much getting at in the podcast.
This is a random localizer, you can be sure the same has been said by other company's random employs too. You should also probably listen to the podcast, he's not as (if at all) condescending as you make it sound.
You're making it sound like Iwata came to your house, slapped you, and said Xenoblade was a mistake.
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
But that's not what he did, that's not even his attitude. Listen to the fucking podcast.
Futurematic
Member
Sure, when they accepted the framing of their opponent and leaned into it. My god, Super Mario World 2 starring a baby. Or, lol, purple lunchbox. I love Nintendo's games but the company makes dumb avoidable moves constantly.
You know when Nintendo was cool? Goldeneye and the FPS shooter box console. Guess what happened afterwards? Nintendo, like Sega before them, made the brilliant and wise choice to fuck their American branch and triple-down on Japan Is All!!! Like the Sega Saturn it worked ok in Japan, and terribly everywhere else. Heck if Sega could make the Dreamcast cool--and it was--with their insane niche-y games + sports it is purely Nintendo's fault that they couldn't do it with the GCN. Not some wider industry problem with Nintendo by magic, that was all self-inflicted. The reason they are often viewed as uncool or losers or whatever is entirely their fault from failing to counter marketting and essentially accepting the Overton Window adjustements of Sony/Sega/MS, to being hilariously comic book incompetent on obvious moves.
The N64 was neck and neck with the PSX in NA for a long time--indeed it even won Canada--and a smart play or two would have meant the same for the GCN. (Buy Bungie, get Free Radical to make Goldeneye 2, don't kill NoA, increase ties with PC developers that backed the N64, more FPS, western RPGs, etc: the N64/Xbox play.) Nintendo made the Sega Saturn play.
All props for the Wii opening, that's a proper jack move. Too bad their usual failings took over in the second half of the system. I have my fingers crossed for NX, but their track record as a platform holder since the N64 (even under massive Wii success) doesn't give me much hope.
I still don't get the "risk" logic. If any niche Nintendo game is going to find a market, it'll be in NA...which has historically been Nintendo's largest market by far (in the home console space). I don't sympathize with NoA at all, especially when NoE is willing to take more risks despite having much less to work with.
This might be crying over long over spilled milk, but Nintendo letting Microsoft buying Rare left a wide 'gap' of software that they really haven't filled since :l.
They made FPS games (Goldeneye, Perfect Dark), racing games (Diddy Kong Racing, the scrapped Donkey Kong Racing), adventure games (Conker's Bad Fur Day, Starfox Adventures), open-world platformers (Banjo 1 and 2, the Scrapped GC Banjo 3, Donkey Kong 64), TPS (Jet Force Gemini), Fighting games (Killer Instinct) and tons more!
They single handedly 'saved' the N64 for Nintendo during long software droughts and success of their games helped pave the way for both mature games (shooters) and kid-friendly games (platformers) to land on Nintendo consoles.
With them being gone, Nintendo lost a studio that made a number of genre's that their internal studios lacked (the FPS/TPS being a big one), so they lost that 'edge' they had during the N64 era. They tried with the GC (exclusive MGS 1 remake, the Capcom Five, Eternal Darkness, ect) but they gave up during the Wii era
. They are trying again with the Wii U (Bayonetta 1 and 2, Xenoblade X, SMTxFE, Devils Third, Fatal Frame, ect) but they need to do more work in getting that 'edge' back if they want some modern gamers to jump back to Nintendo.KuroPyonyo
Banned
My takeaway from this that Nintendo management is very questionable:
1.) Why does NCL waste resources greenlighting Xenoblade and buying the dev while NoA doesn't think the game is profitable? A company like Nintendos decisionmaking should be based on a global scope. Another example for that would be the "new" naming, not global at all.
2.) Why does NoA even have localization dutys? Consolidate all localzation at NoE. Should be far more cost effective to have one team working on PAL5 and adding minor alterations to the british translation, then to have another team completly retranslating.
1.) Why does NCL waste resources greenlighting Xenoblade and buying the dev while NoA doesn't think the game is profitable? A company like Nintendos decisionmaking should be based on a global scope. Another example for that would be the "new" naming, not global at all.
2.) Why does NoA even have localization dutys? Consolidate all localzation at NoE. Should be far more cost effective to have one team working on PAL5 and adding minor alterations to the british translation, then to have another team completly retranslating.
ForsakenLotus
Member
Sometimes a console manufacturer needs to take risks on really good games even if they are financial risks if they want to attract a wider audience. Xenoblade is not the type of game people expected to get on the Wii, so I'm sure it made some new fans as well as increased the Wii U's word of mouth appeal for hardcore gamers. It may not make a huge dent by itself, but games like it can be profitable in many ways.
Are you serious on your second point? The answer is because they localize tons of games are they still are.
Yeah how dare the hardcore and loyal fans ask for a potential success to be localized for the biggest market when the company was the richest it has been in its 100+ years of history?
HOW DARE THEY?
Seriously this company is run by complete idiots. Calculated risks my ass.
Also we didn't have to wait the terrible sales to understand that WiiU's name was confusing for the average Joe, many people called it when the console was presented and no this isn't revisionist history.
HOW DARE THEY?
Seriously this company is run by complete idiots. Calculated risks my ass.
Also we didn't have to wait the terrible sales to understand that WiiU's name was confusing for the average Joe, many people called it when the console was presented and no this isn't revisionist history.
ALLseeingEYE
Member
True, though I think that's a bit more excusable given the unproven nature of the Souls style game with audiences at the time. That was released in an era where games were typically overly streamlined, and it was assumed that oversimplifying games was the key to a wider audience.
On the other hand, gamers seem to make purchasing decisions based on excess. Gamers love open-world games, and tend to buy them based on the amount of gameplay they can seemingly get out of them. 100 hours of story in a huge open-world RPG is pretty much a no-brainer purchase for a huge demographic of gamers. Imagine if Nintendo or Sony showcased Xenoblade at E3, put it front and center, pimped it as a massive open-world with over a hundred hours of story, and called it the next-generation of japanese RPG's? Pretty sure that would have piqued a lot of interest that could have been hammered home when reviews hit. Lets also not forget that games with incredible metacritic reviews, such as with Xenoblade, also tend to generate a ton of word of mouth.
I think the wildcard here is that therehad never been a JRPG quite like Xenoblade. Nintendo doing proper communication and marketing could have solved that though.
That Wii with the gamepad on top is embarrassing. Name confusion 101.People have been complaining, rightfully so, about the abysmal name they gave the platform. Dude is a little delusional if he 100% believes that the name has nothing to do with it.
I mean, fuck, even Target, a major retailer partner for NOA, couldn't get it right at one point:
"Wii U" was never a name the general population looked at and thought "oh, hey, that's the new Wii". They were thinking more along the lines of "Galaxy S5 Mini", "iPhone 5C", etc. An addon or different version of the same thing. So, yeah - I'd have to disagree with him on the idea that the name had no impact and is really only something people look at in hindsight. It's been a glaring error about the thing since day 0 and continues to be. Doesn't help Nintendo struggled to even communicate in their own advertisements that it wasn't just a tablet for the Wii for a while...
Biggest market yeah, but the group of people that were interested in the game was small (it's not as big as you think it is, they're very vocal but small still). NoA considered they wouldn't get the profit to cover the cost of localizing it (localizing Xenoblade was very expensive). But NoE took the hit and did the project. Then NoA decided to bring it over then because they would only have to cover the retail aspect. And I believe the game sold as well as it did because most people didn't know about the game till Operation Rainfall did its campaign, so the game likely wouldn't have sold well if Rainfall didn't even happen, so NoA was probably right.
So yeah, how dare NoA act like a business and how dare NoE took the plunge.
We got the game in the end.
And now, Nintendo is localizing more games (one reason being they don't really have any choice considering their line-up), they're taking more risk like Tomodachi Life, Bravely Default (because SE thought it wouldn't sell well!), Fantasy Life, Yokai Watch and LBX!
They changed their tune and isn't that a good thing?
They changed their tune and isn't that a good thing?
It really depends on if NoA had a choice or those games were mandated to be released by NCL. The problem is NoA not Nintendo as a whole here.
NoA makes its own decisions for its own market.
They make their own choices for the most part.
The "only New 3DS XL for the Americas" is a example, and don't get me wrong I'm still upset about that because I love the smaller model, but NoA is probably right why they made that choice. The XL is the preferred model and sells the most.
ShockingAlberto, I think, made the point that NOA's localization record was particularly terrible during the Wii era. That says a lot because they were tremendously successful at that time and could have afforded to expand the Wii's library. It's hard to believe that localizing Xenoblade for the extremely popular Wii was a much more intolerable risk than bringing Baten Kaitos to American Gamecubes. Nobody's life was at stake. IMO, they simply lost interest in catering to certain gamers because those people were now a much smaller proportion of Nintendo's newly "expanded" audience. It's not that Xenoblade was too risky; rather, NOA thought it wasn't worth the risk. There's a difference.
I consider myself a pretty loyal Nintendo customer but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've derived some schandenfreude from seeing the Wii U struggle to sell 1/10th of the Wii's final sales number. NOA helped cultivate a perception of the Wii brand as consoles that don't cater to more traditional gamers. Having further alienated that group with the Wii it's not surprising to see Wii U struggle to match even the Gamecube's sales performance after Nintendo failed to replicate the Wii's broader appeal.
They went their own way with the Wii and did very well but they failed to use it as a starting point to address the issues which culminated in the Gamecube's relatively poor sales. In contrast, Microsoft and Sony used their position of strength in the traditional game market to go after Nintendo's blue ocean (with Kinect and Move) once they saw that there was a demand. Was that "risky"? There were no guarantees but Nintendo's competitors thought that catering to that audience was worth the risk.
I consider myself a pretty loyal Nintendo customer but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've derived some schandenfreude from seeing the Wii U struggle to sell 1/10th of the Wii's final sales number. NOA helped cultivate a perception of the Wii brand as consoles that don't cater to more traditional gamers. Having further alienated that group with the Wii it's not surprising to see Wii U struggle to match even the Gamecube's sales performance after Nintendo failed to replicate the Wii's broader appeal.
They went their own way with the Wii and did very well but they failed to use it as a starting point to address the issues which culminated in the Gamecube's relatively poor sales. In contrast, Microsoft and Sony used their position of strength in the traditional game market to go after Nintendo's blue ocean (with Kinect and Move) once they saw that there was a demand. Was that "risky"? There were no guarantees but Nintendo's competitors thought that catering to that audience was worth the risk.
Sony and Microsoft subsidize their gaming divisions. Therefore, it's easier for those divisions to take risks. After the billions of dollars lost by the gaming divisions of Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo decided that they'd try to produce hardware as low cost as possible while still satisfying customers. This worked with the Wii but not with the Wii U. Perhaps if Nintendo manages to transform themselves into a conglomerate, we'll see more risk taking behavior.
What year did either of those come out? You may need to catch up to current day and stop living near a decade in the past.
PreyingShark
Member
IIRC, there was actually a meeting where Reggie basically called out everybody's bullshit on Geist before it even came out. Can't remember the link though. I think it was an Emily Rogers article.
Ya, she had an article on that and how they turned to RE4 instead. But also about how NoJ/NCL got completely blindsided by "murder games in HD" and the then growing contempt at old (Yamauchi) Nintendo with the evolving gamer market.
This was an example, do you have one that shows NOA making a good business decision lately? The current crop at NOA views hardcore fans as an irritant rather than a market to be served and this seems like it isn't a new decision.
Iwata in this past year discussed the difficulties of getting new ideas done at Nintendo.
Granted what Nintendo does well they do better than anyone. Look at a Splatoon, a 15% attach rate for a new IP?
Again, I don't know what it costs to localize a title, but I would challenge someone who says the business case cannot be made for most Nintendo titles.
The already localized ones that weren't released is an example. The cost is already paid, all that's left is to press the disks. i don't know what the relationship with retailers is, but titles that are better served for Amazon or GameStop should only be sold there.
Waldo Lydecker
Member
Such a shame that as a Nintendo consumer you just know in advance that you'll be missing out on some great games. I mean, look back in history at all the games you've missed out on because they would not localize them in the US
- Fatal Frame 4
- Another Code: R
- Last Window
- Dragon Quest VII
- Pandora's Tower
- Disaster: Day of Crisis
Luckily we had Operation Rainfall and yeah some titles were released in Europe. But still, Nintendo was printing money with the DS and the Wii. And ofcourse, also we've missed out on Playstation games (Valkyria Chronicles 3 to name one), but still I do think that Nintendo is the champion of missed opportunities. And I somehow don't trust Reggie one bit to change this whole situation.
- Fatal Frame 4
- Another Code: R
- Last Window
- Dragon Quest VII
- Pandora's Tower
- Disaster: Day of Crisis
Luckily we had Operation Rainfall and yeah some titles were released in Europe. But still, Nintendo was printing money with the DS and the Wii. And ofcourse, also we've missed out on Playstation games (Valkyria Chronicles 3 to name one), but still I do think that Nintendo is the champion of missed opportunities. And I somehow don't trust Reggie one bit to change this whole situation.
Current NoA is localizing everything, which is for said hardcore fans who even have a WiiU. As I said, time to catch up with present day where NoA is localizing guaranteed lose titles like the extremely Japanese #FE. They're localizing near everything they can get their hands on from outside companies too, taking Bravely Default and Second from SE who refused to publish or localize either... the former of which was also a risky move.
ShockingAlberto
Member
While I've made my stance clear on how badly I think Nintendo is handling this, I still don't get why they're blamed for DQ7.
I like how SE said the sales of Bravely Default in the US made them reconsider their strategy out here but they still won't release Dragon Quest 7 3DS.
That can change (rare chance), but it's kinda funny SE is being reluctant and now NoA is bringing their titles over like DQ6 and 9 which did rather well, especially DQ9.I like how SE said the sales of Bravely Default in the US made them reconsider their strategy out here but they still won't release Dragon Quest 7 3DS.
ShockingAlberto
Member
I like how SE said the sales of Bravely Default in the US made them reconsider their strategy out here but they still won't release Dragon Quest 7 3DS.
They also didn't release Bravely Second, so it was pretty obviously just lip service.
Nintendo is the platform holder, and were involved in previous localisations would be my guess. People should be blaming SE before they even start looking at Nintendo.
But Nintendo takes risks. Wii was a risk and Wii U was risky in certain ways as well. Funding Xenoblade development was a risk.
It's not about risk aversiveness, it's about not giving a shit (about some things). That's my point.
I'd received the message loud and clear even before Pranger put it into words.
This harping on "risk" is a red herring.
You take the risk if you consider the potential reward to be worthwhile.
I like how SE said the sales of Bravely Default in the US made them reconsider their strategy out here but they still won't release Dragon Quest 7 3DS.
I think you guys are underestimating how bad the other remakes did vs. the time and effort it would take to release them. I think there should've been a test, but both companies seemingly just worked on games that would sell more.
Dynasty8
Member
Xenoblade wasn't risky IMO. Obviously I'm not as well informed as an employee of NoA, but just looking at the facts, it's pretty simple from my point of view.
It was no surprise that the game was very well made. The impressions from Japan were all positive. This is a game coming from team members who helped work on Square's golden age of JRPGs.
During the end of the Wii's lifecycle, Nintendo fans in the U.S were starving for an epic game like Xenoblade...and to deny them that wasn't due to being risky...it was a boneheaded move.
It was already completed.
It was well received.
It was already translated in English.
and it ended up selling more in the United States than Japan and Europe combined.
It would have been such a waste if this game didn't come stateside.
It was no surprise that the game was very well made. The impressions from Japan were all positive. This is a game coming from team members who helped work on Square's golden age of JRPGs.
During the end of the Wii's lifecycle, Nintendo fans in the U.S were starving for an epic game like Xenoblade...and to deny them that wasn't due to being risky...it was a boneheaded move.
It was already completed.
It was well received.
It was already translated in English.
and it ended up selling more in the United States than Japan and Europe combined.
It would have been such a waste if this game didn't come stateside.
He was talking pre-Europe localization when he implied that it was a risk.
Rhazer Fusion
Member
I don't think it's actually the name holding the Wii U back, but the nonexistent, lackluster marketing and still exorbitant price of the system that is holding it back.
That's because when SE brought the DQ4 and 5 remakes over they did very little to advertise them and they sold poorly because of that. NoA did better marketing for 6 and 9.
Explain NoA trying to open up to Smash community and encouraging the Splatoon community to grow into a competitive thing. They even used a quote from The Rapture, a competitive Smash player and now competitive Splatoon player and owner of Squidboards in one of their videos about the August update. Explain the Nintendo World Championships that JC said that it was a love letter to every Nintendo fan and they put all their effort into that.
Bill Trinen was even at a Smash tournament himself just a week ago during SGDQ. He and other Nintendo employees didn't do interviews but they were smashing away with everyone there. For all I know you might even see a Treehouse employee at a GDQ next year. I know someone there really wants to attend and even wants to learn to speed run ICO and other obscure games.
Currently NoA is localizing everything and expanding their localization team. They also want to be a part of the communities more. Before now, Nintendo was this super secret company (still largely are) but in the time span between then in now, much has changed and they're being more open and trying to reconnect with the gaming communities.