Meanwhile, at Nintendo of America…
As some of you may know, Nintendo recently released 3 titles in Japan. Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower. And while Xenoblade and The Last Story are announced for Europe, Nintendo of America seems to be showing an extreme disintrest in localizing these titles. And if the recent rumor is true about Nintendo of America having no intentions localizing Xenoblade, I don’t have much hope for The Last Story either. What are North Americans to do?
Usually I just think, “well, I hate it but Nintendo’s overall audience doesn’t care.” And to a certain extent, that probably remains true. But after the rumor spread about Nintendo of America’s stubbornness, a surprising number of people have come together to push Nintendo of America into localizing these titles. They’ve been posting on Nintendo’s Facebook page and Twitter account.
In addition to that, people are also preodering Xenoblade using an old amazon listing under the name Monodo: Beginning of the World (the title’s old name before changing to Xenoblade). The title has now sky rocketed to Amazon’s #1 spot for video games, Wii games and action games. People are even snail mailing Reggie Fils-Aime, which you can find that info on IGN’s forums, who kick started the whole thing.
Will this do anything? Probably not. I’m just impressed how far it has come along in such a short amount of time. But I figured I’d do my part by preordering and posting to raise awareness for all you Oculin’s Box regulars (Hi, Darrel). At the end of the day, I have my english release of Xenoblade whether NA localizes it or not, so I’m not too terribly desperate.
But other than that, I encourage anyone interested in the title to at least just give NoA a tap on the shoulder via FaceBook or Twitter. And, if you really intend on picking up Xenoblade, going ahead and preordering the game. Amazon doesn’t charge you until shipping date anyways.
Just try not to get your hopes up.
It’s too bad the chances of seeing these games in the U.S are slim, but at least we’ll get to enjoy an english version of Xenoblade down the line.
I have to say that it really is impressive what passionate gamers can do when they band together. I hope Nintendo of America looks at all this effort and takes note of how many fans are interested in these games.