Jimquisition: Nintendo of America

[sooperman]

I can't imagine anyone being surprised by this sort of thing. I haven't felt the impression that Nintendo really cared for years, and extra effort is not something they are any good at.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95541-Skirt-Kept-Peach-Out-of-New-Super-Mario-Brothers

A skirt kept one of the staples of the franchise out of the Wii re-boot. "...we'd have to come up with a special programming to handle how the skirt is handled in the gameplay..."

Which is to say, 'we'd have to put in a but of effort, but it's not going to affect sales in any way, so we figured we'd just leave it out.' And as Jim said, it's not like Nintendo has billions of dollars at its disposal and hundreds of professional programmers whose entire livelihoods depend on coming up with special programming, right?

 

[1337mokro]

Wait what? They won't localize a game for North America? They screwed up Professor Layton by localizing it in Dutch, yes they localized a game for barely a country with 16 million people! Keep in mind only a small fraction of that 16 million will actually buy that game. Than proceeded to make the English version unavailable in Holland, the cartridge doesn't even come with a language option.

So it's not to expensive to completely localize a game in Dutch, which grammatically is a fucking horrible language to translate into, so they could have 50'000 more sales at best but localizing a game for a country with 300 million inhabitants is to costly?

Fuck that shit. I'm not just pissed about that, seeing as I am Dutch I will be getting Xenoblade. I'm pissed that not only do they mess up the localization they proceed to exclude any other version but the localized version.

Nintendo in general is staffed by complete idiots in my opinion.

 

[Riobux]

Long time listener; first time commenter of this series. Let me just start with my opinion of the general Jimquisition series. Generally, I've enjoyed it. It holds good points, usually has an interesting rant and the ego-maniacal behaviour reminds me more of Yahtzee than an elitist idiot without a clue.

The reason why I mention this is simply because, at least personally, this episode isn't as good as the previous ones. It's less like an angry eccentric version of Extra Credits and more like a kid on Youtube sore that he can't afford to import. That's not to say there isn't a good point here, but the personalisation of the issue just kills any understanding I have of the issue. Maybe it's because the UK are usually one of the after-thought releases than right there at the national release date. Games are released in the UK last, or next to last (either being released at the same time or just before the Australian release date). Even then, compared to the U.S. releases, we get it worse off. That's a very nice Rock Band the US had for over nine months before EA Games, the distributor, or the publisher MTV Games thought that maybe it would be a nice idea to release it in Europe. When westernisation of Demon's Souls got mentioned, US was right there. What wasn't mentioned until quite some time later was Europe (9 months after the US release, it was released in Europe).

Maybe I'd be less sour about this episode if this was a bit more than someone demanding the US market being treated nicer than it currently is. Like having better pre-order bonuses, a more confirmed release (Rock Band and Demon's Souls being the classic examples) and a typically earlier release date isn't good enough.

 

[TheAngryMonkey]

Great episode, watch your show every week.
This show just reminded me that I own a Wii, I totally forgot all about that thing. I gave it to this girl that was dating my buddy, and they broke up 2 years ago. Huh I wonder if I still can get it back, at least for the GameCube Controllers.

 

[johnnnny guitar]

Another great show jim keep them coming

 

[ms_sunlight]

Nintendo have always pulled this crap. It's just more irritating now.

Thing is, not all that long ago most game consumers still didn't have internet access. You got odd situations like Terranigma for the SNES being localised in English and then released in Australasia only, which is a similarly weird decision, but hardly anyone who was missing out knew about it. They certainly couldn't go on YouTube and see footage of the game, or see the review in Famitsu quoted on Wikipedia.

What really sticks in the craw is looking forward to something and having it snatched away. Incidentally, I didn't buy a Wii, but that's because I think motion detection controllers are rubbish, and Twilight Princess looked and played fine on Gamecube.

 

[WilliamRLBaker]

now you just need to do stuff like this for other episodes instead of neutering your self for the escapist audiance.

 

[Faux Furry]

I understand you perfectly, Jim, therefore I'd have no problem following what's going on in Xenoblade, Pandora's Tower or The Last Story if they are bought to the USA with the European localization.

Nintendo of America wants to cut the flow to the Wii off so Americans won't have a compelling reason not to upgrade their systems and their collection of games come 2012. Backward compatibility is bad for new game sales,so the line of reasoning goes.

I think that ReCaptcha knows who is behind this conspiracy to keep anything that isn't shovelware or Nintendo exclusives off of the Wii, it's the

!

 

[YonderTunic]

I've always loved Nintendo since the SNES days, but after the Wii happened I was starting to feel a bit left out. Now with the Wii U shaped up to be (in my opinion) more or less the same mess that the Wii was in, I'm about ready to give up on the company all togethor. I was willing to put up with them not brining any of those three games to America because I believed it was good business sense, that hey America never buys em anyways right?

Now after seeing those sales charts I got nothing left for 'em. I agree completely, fuck Nintendo....

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Nintendo deserved this brutal miclashing thoroughly. Seriously. I'm a Nintendo fan but I'm getting less and less motivated to buy Nintendo as the years go on. Guess I'll stick to the PC for awhile.

 

[CrystalShadow]

OK, that's just... Eh.

I'm sure there's some reason beyond that, but it does start to look incredibly dumb when there is already an 'english' release of a game in existence to then decide not to release it in America?

Localization issue? What localisation issues?

... Or do you mean Americans might not understand references made with a british audience in mind?

(Cause let's face it; European localisation is usually English, French & german, with, if you're lucky, Spanish and Italian, and possibly game manuals and box designs in a half dozen other languages.)

Ah well.

NOA's crappy decisions may seem messed up, but by the sounds of it, NOE is far more willing to take these slightly obscure things and release them for some reason...

Whatever it may be, it's odd, but it probably explains why I haven't noticed what's being complained about so much. (What with being in Europe & all).

 

[plainlake]

I like valve, anyone else like Valve? cause I do!

 

[NaramSuen]

Jim, you absolutely nailed it!

Nintendo of America told its fans straight out, we do not want your money. If these people at Project Rainfall are serious, they should oblige Nintendo of America and leave its products on the shelf to collect dust.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Two words for you Jim: Thank. You.

The Last Story is a game that I've been looking forward to since I first heard of it. Also, in the past year, I've had two periods of time (lasting a few weeks each) when I've played my Wii, and in both of those periods of time I was playing Virtual Console games.

This drought of good Wii titles makes the dry spells from the Gamecube days look like oases in comparison.

And I can understand the lack of localization for the games you mention, IF it was legitimately bad decision to localize...but you clearly demonstrated that it would be a good business move. The games would sell, NoA would make money, and the fans would be happy and have more goodwill toward Nintendo leading up to the launch of the WiiU. EVERYBODY WINS!

But I guess Nintendo of America makes their business decisions based on something that's not logic...

 

[zelda2fanboy]

I have no interest in these games, but yeah, Nintendo is shitty to its fans. Where the fuck is Earthbound on the virtual console, god damn it? I've read all the excuses, all the potential legal justifications, and it's a big old pack of bullshit. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to spend 800 wii points or 1000 or 2000 to play a game I've wanted to play for years. And for that matter, where's Earthbound 0 and 3? Or the trilogy on gameboy advance? It's this kind of smug self righteous crap that turned me off as a fan. I play PS3 now. I don't need your 3DS or your U or whatever the fuck you want to peddle in the next five or ten years. I've had enough. This is the first year as club nintendo member I didn't meet platinum status and it will be the first of many.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Let's e fair to Nintendo for one thing: they, like many others, can't not speak in PR bull shit. We know they're not telling us everything, and they know we know, but they still do it.

I've seen this crap happen with anime a lot. Someone wants to license something for the NA market but the licence holder sees a bigger market and more demand, so jacks up the asking price to the point it may no longer be viable for that market. Some even ahve a very poor understanding of just how overhyped their sales expectations are. And since multiple parties have to get involved (ie: music is licenced seperatly) it can be very tenuious.

What I'm saying is it may not be Nintendo's fault here, at least not entirely. At the very least, don't take a blanket PR stantment as an excuse to malign the mentally disabled.

 

[SoulSalmon]

Advocacy of piracy, albeit under rather specific conditions, from an editor-approved Escapist video.

Huh. I haven't seen that happen before.

I know right?
I've been put on probation for much less then what Jim said this episode... little bit sore about that -.-

 

[Baresark]

I was going to advocate piracy myself if they didn't want to localize. Nothing off my back. Where there is a need the market will not fulfill, the black market will do just fine.