You may remember earlier this week when I mentioned Operation Rainfall. What this boiled down to was Nintendo fans getting fed up of quality titles The Last Story, Pandora’s Tower and Xenoblade Chronicles not getting a release date outside of Japan, and deciding to pretty much bully Nintendo into action.
Well…bad news. The following was posted on Nintendo’s Facebook page:
“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!”
Europe has faired much better, with Xenoblade Chronicles being confirmed for September, and The Last Story rumoured to be on the way in 2012.
Source: IGN
hazelam
what i don’t understand is, with xenoblade getting an eu release what’s the issue with the us release??
i assume one of the languages the eu version is localised into is english, so localisation shouldn’t be a problem.
and what other languges would have have to support in the us?
maybe spanish and french, i would assume those would be featured in an eu version too.
what are they thinking?
and another thing, europe gets it but the us doesn’t?
who are these people and what have they done with the real nintendo? ^_^
Youles
Can they not import the EU version, or will it not work on the US system? I realise this isn’t the point, but I guess the important thing is that they get to play the game in their language
nemesisND1derboy
No, Wii games are region locked. Imports won’t work.
Death_In_Flamez
I believe I can use something in text language to some up this article and it’s impact on people. lol. Nah kinda annoyed though for those NA guys. It’s a game, why can’t they see it released?
Mr.Spo
The really frustrating thing for North Americans is that this isn’t a decision made by Iwata and co in Kyoto–localising these titles is purely Nintendo of America’s decision. Even though NoA see the demand for these titles, even though North America is Wii’s biggest market, even though these titles would likely do better than they’ll do in Europe (which is getting them anyway, and a limited edition Xenoblade pack), NoA refuse to localise them.
I wish at this point Nintendo of Japan would intervene. These titles can’t be picked up by another publisher either, Xenoblade was developed by a first party Nintendo studio (Monolith Soft), The Last Story IP is owned by Nintendo and the game was co-developed by them, Mistwalker and AQ Interactive, and Pandora’s Tower is also a first party IP.
If Nintendo of America won’t bring these to the states, then they won’t come to the states as legal releases. Hopefully, if plenty of gamers in Europe pick up Xenoblade when that releases here, it will go some way to change NoA’s mind.