It's weird hearing Reggie trying to hype himself up for these games when we know he didn't want them in the first place.

Still, Day 1 purchase.

Better late than never. Way to step up to the plate, XSeed.

Such an awesome news! Thanks Xseed!

Woohoo!

Hurray! The begging and shouting worked.

I had a feeling that TLS had a high probability of coming over if Xeno got a release date.
But I hope all of you OpRainfallers out there don't continue to hold your breath for Pandora's Tower, because I'm pretty sure it ain't happenin'.

2 out of three was the best you really could have expected anyway.

I just hope it comes out atleast 2 months before the Wii U and gets promoted at E3 even if it came out just before that event too.

Maybe they should wait and release dual versions for Wii U and Wii.

*face palm*

People actually believe Reggie didn't want these games?  There's no reason for Reggie not to want these games especially knowing the cult demand. The idea that they weren't announced sooner simply because Reggie personally didn't want them is ridiculous and just plain childish.

The weakness of the Dollar compared to the Pound and Euro is why they couldn't be as quick to commit as NOE could-- it was far riskier to take a major loss in the NA market.

It's far more likely that Reggie did want them and was probably a key player in working to ensure they did come here.

And it starts... I'll sit this one out. I'm just happy to get the game. The Last Story was the one I really wanted. I hope it comes out well before November. I can't be bothered when there's Wii U (probably) and Resident Evil 6 to be played.

Great news for North American gamers!  Props to Xseed Games for stepping up to make this game available - hopefully people will be willing to actually buy a copy.

I feel asleep a few hours ago and couldn't cover the NA live stream properly so I came in here refreshed the blog real quick and scrolled down and my reaction was basicaly this when I got to the end. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpgy21r_dRE

Anyway I already have Xenoblade Chronicles preordered down at Gamestop so I guess XSeed just has to direct me to where I can throw my money at them. This is being bought.

Yay! Last Story!!
Now, about that DQX...

I have little doubt that DQX will be coming Stateside.  Thought I expect it to be the Wii U version only and about 6 month to a year after Japaneses launch.

There is still a chance we could get Pandora's Tower. If Xseed were to release Last Story in say may or june of this year then we could get Pandora's Tower in maybe july or august of this year. Of course I do not think that Xessed or Nintendo will publish this game in North America due to its content. There is always Atlus. Atlus releases games in limited quantities, so even if the demand for the game is low, Atlus would still have the capacity to satisfy the people who want this game. So, we very well could have all three games by the time the Wii U is launched.

Edit:

Even if 50,000 people buy Pandora's Tower in North America, Atlus is good at publishing games in small enough quantities that 50,000 would still be a good margin for profits for them to handle.

We will not get Pandora's Tower. I guarantee you that you can walk into a store on day one and buy a Wii that game is not coming to North America. The Last Story has a western design aesthetic and was made by the creator of Final Fantasy, so I can see why XSEED might give it a shot. Pandora's tower has neither the broad appeal nor the strong pedigree, and would be a much tougher sell.

While it's really great that Nintendo finally saw common sense and allowed a company that wanted one of the Rainfall games to actually bring them over here, I won't be buying the NA version of this game.  It's nothing against XSEED, but this deal simply took too long.  Months ago, I asked for the import version for my Birthday in April.  I've seen some folks on my Twitter feed estimate the NA release as sometime in the Summer, and that's simply too late.  If the game was releasing earlier I'd get it wholeheartedly, but I'm not buying a version of the game I don't need so XSEED will just have to manage without my sale.

Xseed can shut up and take my money.

I'm glad to see this coming out.  However, like with Xenoblade, I'm not too thrilled with how this has come about.  NOA didn't want anything to do with these games and only way we got them was with someone else's involvement.  The best NOA did was permit Xseed and GameStop to localize them.  Does NOA think they're doing us a favour?  They're doing the absolute bare minimum and I truly believe that if these other parties didn't get involved we would not get these at all and NOA would be fine with months and months of jack shit nothing until the Wii U came out.  My negative feelings towards NOA have not changed at all.  They might have if NOA localized these completely themselves in a "better late than never" scenario.  At least then we would know NOA gave a damn.

Nintendo talks about how they want core gamers to buy the Wii U and the whole Operation Rainfall thing has suggested the exact opposite.  Yes, we now get these games which is good but the way we're getting them doesn't make NOA look like they're at the pulse of core gaming.  If anything it proves the exact opposite.  So is this how it will work on the Wii U?  Will we only get the more obscure core games if someone else offers to foot the bill?  Nintendo should not want core gamers thinking that.  No one should be iffy about a Wii U because they're wondering if the "good" games will get localized.

Well, as it turns out the person who was supposed to gift me the game...forgot to order it months ago when I gave them the link.  So I guess I will be getting the NA release after all.  -_-'

It also doesn't help that even among Operation Rainfall supporters, hardly anyone cares about Pandora's Tower either.  Xenoblade and The Last Story were the two games everyone wanted and were demanding to come over.  Pandora's Tower was just thrown in because it was lucky to be released right before Operation Rainfall started and the creators of the campaign were like "Oh what the hell, might as well just put it in there anyway if we're demanding Japan/Europe only games".

Don't really agree with that Luigi Dude. I just think it had to do with lack of info. Anyway XSeed has a Facebook page up for the info and a section on their forums. I went and posted both in the topic in the games section.

I seriously can't believe that they are people who are still convinced that "Reggie hates the Rainfall gamess" or that "Reggie is trying to stop the Rainfall games from reaching North America" and that Reggie is somehow putting on an act by being excited that The Last Story is coming to North America.

It started with MOTHER 3 fans, but Reggie has become this boogieman scapegoat to blame for whenever North American Nintendo fans don't get their way exactly when and how they demand it.

Seriously, Reggie isn't some dictator who was keeping Xenoblade and The Last Story in a vault because he hates Nintendo fans, nor can he push a button and magically have them instantly localized, debuged, test played, manufactured, advertised, and shipped to store shelves.


The idea that Nintendo in any way, screwed, mistreated, or betrayed the trust of their customers in regards to the localization of these games is LAUGHABLE.

If anything, North American gamers should feel outraged about Disaster: Day of Crisis and Project: HAMMER being used to promote the Wii at the E3 2006 Wii reveal only for them to never see the light of day.

Reggie knew they were good games, but he doesn't have the luxury of making decisions based on that. If he didn't think they would be profitable, it didn't matter how great they were; he would be doing his job badly to release them despite that. Now GameStop and XSEED are taking on the risk, so NOA's in a more favorable position for these games to come out, and he can talk about how great they are.

He doesn't need such a button to have the games localized; debugged; and play-tested, because these games are already localized into English.  As for having them manufactured; advertised; and shipped, he absolutely can "push a button" and have that done.  That's part of being the head of NoA and having the authority to decide what NoA does and does not pick up (unless given specific orders from Nintendo Corporate).  He just didn't think these games could turn a massive profit in NA, so he decided that NoA would not release them.

I think the only reason Reggie even agreed to let XSEED pick The Last Story up was because of Nintendo Corporate's recent abysmal earnings report.  He probably got orders from Nintendo Corporate to allow other companies to pick up the rights so Nintendo Corporate would see some extra cash for the next earnings report.

I just want to note that this is great news and should be celebrated. People are just being downers just because they can. It really doesn't matter much why we are getting this. I mean can't we just not read to much into things about the games and just play them?

Uh... NO! What kind of bizarro world are you living in? Celebrate when good things happen... That's hippie nonsense.

This is the internet where people will complain about this news no matter what unless Reggie personally comes to their house with a free copy of The Last Story tonight, some high quality hookers and a truck full of weed.

Exactly. People wanted these games to come out, after showing there may be buyers through Operation Rainfall they allowed the games to come stateside. I thought that is what people wanted? Yet everyone is still complaining. People seem to have the need to complain no matter what, instead of "We want these games to come out" it has now evolved to "It has taken too long, let's whine some more". The fact is that NOA didn't do this out of malice, they were extremely uncertain if it would be profitable, and people have shown that it may in fact be. This news should be positive, not just because they are coming out here, but that campaigns for a product to be released is not always in vain.

Let's just hope people put their money where their mouth is, though I still have a feeling neither game is going to do well, I hope I am wrong.

I don't think there's anyone in this thread who isn't happy that this game is coming to North America. The thing is, though, that doesn't produce much discussion. The discussion is coming from an analysis of how it came to be, which Maxi is right to say doesn't really matter, but some people still find that interesting, and there are reasons to be less than thrilled with the circumstances that led us here.

You simply don't have a realistic conception of the role Reggie plays within Nintendo and how Nintendo operates.

If you want to cling to your baseless story that Reggie was actually trying to actively PREVENT the Rainfall games from coming to North America and that he was ordered by NCL to allow Xseed to localize The Last Story, feel free to do so.

The reality is, NCL has had a documented history of preventing and hindering NOA from bringing over fan favorite Japanese titles to the Americas, not the other way around.

The reality is that Nintendo is a very secretive company, and we will most likely never know exactly how this went down, so singling out broodwars' comment as being baseless is pretty silly. Also, NCL hindering a North American release doesn't really make sense when you consider that NOE, which is more of a puppet of NCL than NOA is, released the games itself without third party help.

Yes, we don't know exactly how things went down behind the scenes within Nintendo.

Therefore, saying that Reggie was actively trying to prevent the Rainfall games from coming to North America without some sort of memo or credible primary source is just as baseless as if I were to say that Reggie was passionately crusading behind the scenes and was being knocked down at every corner by NCL.

The reality of course likely has nothing in resemblance between these two extremes.

On the other hand, we do have specific cases on file of NOA actually APPEALING to NCL to bring over games such as MOTHER and EarthBound and being shut down by NCL themselves.

It being NCL's fault makes zero sense. The president of Nintendo isn't batshit crazy Yamauchi stepped down years ago, so why the hell would he have NOE translate it into English and release it themselves but take active steps to prevent NOA from releasing the same thing? The only thing that makes any sense is this being NOA's, and by extension Reggie's, call. As I've said, I doubt there was any malice in it, it was all business, but I don't think there's any explanation that makes sense that doesn't involve NOA being responsible for what happened.

There's a difference between "actively trying to prevent the Rainfall games from coming to North America" (which is what you're saying I'm saying), and "not the least bit interested in the Rainfall games coming to North America", which is what I'm saying.  It's the difference between outright dislike and apathy, and I'm putting Reggie in the latter camp.  I just don't think Reggie ever cared about these games, as evidenced by Gamestop having to make a special deal w/ NoA to release Xenoblade in NA when it was already 99.9% localized and ready to go.  Also, NoA does not have a good history of selling the publishing rights to titles they own to other companies, which is why XSEED having The Last Story is so unusual.  RFN covered this a while back when they pointed out that the last Nintendo title to get picked up in NoA was a GBA title I can't remember the name of, and before that Cubivore on the N64.

I don't think NoA and Reggie "hate" the fans when it comes to these titles.  I just don't think they care about these titles since they won't be multi-million unit sellers, so I'm happy to see The Last Story in the hands of XSEED, a company that does look out for the smaller titles.

If NOA wanted to release these games they would have done it themselves already.  The fact that it took this long for them to get announced and that both of them involve another party footing the bill strongly suggests that NOA was never going to publish these alone.

We get the games in the end and that's great.  But what happens next time Nintendo makes a good game but NOA is iffy about releasing it and no third party comes out of the woodwork to help foot the bill?  Do we just not get it then?  It's a good thing we got them but the way we got them is not encouraging for the future.  I'm still complaining because there is a potential issue here regarding future releases.

I think the Xseed side of this is likely the more interesting story. It's been a long time in coming. First they got in good with Namco Bandai with Retro Game Challenge, which enabled them to localize four Wii games and eventually Solatorobo. They used the NOE translation, which probably got them an in with Nintendo to do the same for The Last Story.

I've been meaning to make this pont for awhile, now seems as good a time as any.

Nintendo works like most other multi-nationals, in that each "division" is a separate company. What I think this means on a practical level is that, though NoA and NoE take direction from "head office" in Japan, they each have their own business targets for the year and, more importantly, their own budgets and financial accountings. Bear with me here, I'm going somewher with this.

During the past fiscal year, which ends shortly at the end of March, NoE spent some of its operating budget on localizing and releasing the Op. Rainfall games. NoE has to pay for that activity out of its own budget and account financially for whether or not that business direction was ultimately profitable. It is its own little (or not so little) company. Its financials roll up into the parent company's financials, but NoE also wants to be profitable independently, on its own balance sheets. Same with NoA.

So NoE expends funds and effort and comes out with 3 localizations. Those are NoE's assets. I'd be willing to bet that NoE would not (could not, by accounting rules) just hand over those assets to NoA free of charge. NoA has to pay for those assets (localizations) and probably at "fair market value". So Reggie et al. have to use their budget to obtain the localized versions of the games and, as others have pointed out, spend NoA money to press the discs, advertise, distribute, etc.

NoA assesses the likely North American market and decides the games have a risk of being not profitable, or maybe only marginally profitable. So, it shares the risk by cutting deals with Gamestop and XSEED. Probably a sound business decision and one based on expenditures solely from NoA's budget. Not NoE's nor head office.

This consideration of what NoA has to do to release the games has been missing from every commentary I have seen. Almost all criticism of NoA's decisions includes something along the lines of "NoE has already done the work, why doesn't NoA just release the damn games? NoA doesn't have to pay for the localisation." Well, I am pretty sure they do. And they make autonomous decisions about their market and their bottom line.

I also think NoA was particularly concerned to do two other things:
1. give Skyward Sword breathing room in the market; and
2. stretch out the few remaining Wii releases available throughout calendar year 2012.

Fatty, that was a rational and well thought out argument.

What's it doing on the internet?  ;)

sorry, let me re-phrase
NineTendoo of UsandA are suckkZors looS3rs!!11!

Does NOA actually have to pay NOE for the translation, though?  90% of NOA's games were developed in Japan by NCL.  Do they buy that code from NCL or are they just given it?  I would assume NCL just sends it to them.  Why would they charge them for it?

I'm not an accountant.  Is there some legal technicality I'm not understanding?

The problem with that argument is that it's built on a faulty premise. He vastly overestimated the amount of independence NOA and especially NOE have. NOA and NOE are separate companies in name only; they are both very much under the control of NCL. Based on what we've seen, it seems like they, or at least NOA, have begun to get a bit more autonomy, but more often than not NCL is calling the shots. I guarantee you that NOE does not have the authority to refuse to let NOA use their translation.

I have to agree with josh if I could give you +1 again right now I would do so.Have to wait another hour. Its actually well thought out.

Nice, I wasn't expecting this today.

Now I have to go research this game and see what it's all about.

Well, I dunno how it works for Nintendo exactly and, yes, I am theorizing to a degree. But, think of NoE and NoA as little fiefdoms. They would never refuse anything NCL told them to do, yes. But as between themselves, they may not be happy, sharing siblings.

It all comes down to money,. The more sinister and cynical side of being in charge of NoE or NoA (Reggie) is that your compensation is based in part (possibly large part) on your fiscal performance. In other words, if NoA turns profit or meets specific business targets, Reggie gets paid more. Same with the NoE folks. So, I am willing to bet that the "cost" of localizing the games is treated as an arms-length transaction vis-vis NoE and NoA. As between the two subsidiaries and NCL, I am not sure it is the same. So, the cost of code from NCL may not be "charged" to NoA, but localizing is treated on the books as strictly a NoA (or NoE) cost that comes out of the subsidiary company's budget. Unless NoE and NoA agreed upfront to share that cost, I think NoE would "charge" NoA for use of the localization "assets".

edit, for stupid spelling mistakes

"The weakness of the Dollar compared to the Pound and Euro is why they couldn't be as quick to commit as NOE could-- it was far riskier to take a major loss in the NA market."

But that's wouldn't matter since the US outsells the Europe market by 33%+.  Also your markup is wrong, just because the game sells more in europe doesn't mean the publisher gains more.  No, the retailers are taking a bigger cut, same with Japan/Aussie ect.  US retailers take a good chunk for themsleves but in other markets that markup is double+.

If you add both those facts then the US (NA) market is quite more profitable then the Europe market when it comes to RPGs most of the time.

------------------------------

Glad to see Last Story coming and have to agree with others about PT--that game wasn't reviewed all that well and it barely broke 20K which is reasonable why the wouldn't translate the game for the US. 

I don't know if you've seen the Euro lately, but it's not that.

Fatty makes a good point. Companies can use this to their advantage to avoid taxes and autonomy's beneficial for getting stuff done when it works, but there are also plenty of dysfunctional companies out there (e.g. Sony). In this case, there could be an issue of pride/awkwardness. Normally, Treehouse does (excellent) localization, and if they don't, they farm it out to a company like 8-4. It's a tricky position not wanting to spend to put the effort into your own localization, and yet have one already out there.

The big question remaining is whether Operation Rainfall has been sucessful and should cease opertions today with just these few titles or should we still support Pandora's Tower despite the likelyhood of it appearing in North America being a whole lot slimmer than the other games? Honestly, despite all the draw backs pertaining to Pandora's Tower, I still want that game in my collection, but without the trouble of importing it.

Pandora's Tower is a lost cause unless The Last Story sells well, which might coax XSEED to pick up the license for NA.  There was no way Pandora's Tower would ever see the light of day in NA if NoA was the only company who could publish it, but now that NoA's opened the floodgates on 3rd party involvement it's certainly possible.

I think the folks behind Operation Rainfall would make better use of their time if they spent it trying to encourage NoA or other interested parties in picking up the Fatal Frame 2 remake that just got announced for EU, though.

Just to clarify, I was referring to the Euro's value a year and a half ago (when NOE made the decision to release the game). Even despite its current troubles though, the Euro is still higher than the US Dollar anyway. And there's still the British Pound on top of that. Trust me, the currency exchange is definitely the reason.

Cubivore is a GameCube game.

I can already answer that Kytim. They are not going to stop with these two titles. They posted on their Facebook I believe that they are going to working on getting as much exposure and make sure Xenoblade and The Last Story sell well and then focus on Pandora's Tower. I'm quite excited for Pandora's Tower just because of the combat system.

Yeah, my mistake.  It only looks like an N64 game, much like Animal Crossing.

I have to say, I don't always think their taste in games to localize is spot on, but I know a lot of it is a matter of opportunity. They have to take what they can get.


If you go back and look at their history it does look much more deliberate though. They really worked with Namco Bandai a lot, and recently with NoE, as you noted, on a Namco Bandai game.


I'm happy for them. I hope this is a big success.

I mean, obviously they weren't planning several years ago to localize The Last Story, but when I talked to them back then, they said they didn't even know how to approach Nintendo (with respect to Mother 3). This was how.

I'd complain if I had to play 'The Last Story' in that situation.

All I can say is you assholes who took part in Op.Rain. better go out and buy it. I'm not a big fan of RPGs (though I've played many, I've only beaten one or two...I think), so don't expect me to foot the bill.