Freezing Rainfall in Hell: Xenoblade Chronicles in America
Us Americans
woke up to some shocking but (unlike
the glut from the other day) welcome
news today: Xenoblade Chronicles
will be making its way to North America after all, Nintendo
of America confirmed today. Many fans looking forward to it were split on
whether it would actually make its way here after NoA’s non-response to Operation Rainfall. Apparently the
company realized their Wii release schedule for next year consisted of Rhythm Heaven Wii and absolutely
nothing else. But hey, that’s good for us, right? The game releases in April
2012.
But wait!
There’s a catch. This news came about after a bunch of Gamestop employees
around the U.S. noted that the game was listed in their store databases…as a
Gamestop-exclusive. That’s bad if you’re the kind of person that really
dislikes shopping at the store, but it wouldn’t be entirely surprising if this
is the case; it’s not the first time Nintendo has released a game only through
one retailer. Tenchu: Dark Secret
for DS (which I’m sure you guessed given the subtitle’s initials) was only
released through Gamestop. Additionally, Electroplankton
and Chibi Robo: Park Patrol were
only released through Nintendo.com and Wal-Mart, respectively — the former was
available in Canada exclusively through, guess what, Gamestop.
But wait! Its
Gamestop-exclusive status only applies if you want to buy it in a store. The
game will also be available via Nintendo’s website, so you have another
option to purchase it if you really, really
hate Gamestop. Preorders on Nintendo.com begin December 19th.
There are a
few problems with this release, however. There appear are a lot of people
saying they won’t buy it out of spite because Nintendo took so long, which is
seriously the worst and dumbest approach to take with this
announcement. You would actually be proving NoA correct in these kinds of games
being unviable for the current market. Would you really want to do that? This is why it would be a good idea to
support this release, even if you imported the European version (finances
permitting, of course). It’s good that most fans who imported intend to do
this, however. If you haven’t played it yet, well, it’s apparently
a pretty swell game.
It’s unknown
as to whether NoA will be redubbing the game at the moment. Given the fact that
it will only be available through two places, they probably wouldn’t go through
with spending any money on that. The only things they might have altered are
words like “armour” and other common spellings our fellow English friends use.
Also, cross your fingers so that we can get at least a soundtrack release with
this like in Europe and Australia, but it seems petty to ask for something like
this considering the efforts many gamers took to even get it out here.
So let’s
celebrate their success. It’s (hopefully) likely that The Last Story and Pandora’s
Tower will follow since NoA and NoE wants to make it look like they’re
continually supporting Wii with software releases until Wii U releases around
next fall.
Update: There’s a trailer on the official website now. It appears they are keeping the British voices, as expected. Just keep in mind that the trailer is loaded with spoilers.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
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YEAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
I’m doing my preorder through Nintendo so they know DAMN WELL what I want to spend my money on.
One down, two to go.
I knew you guys would be happy! (Though there’s only one of you here.)
I thought about pre-ordering it at both places, depending on what details come up — like if one of them has a pre-order incentive. But yeah, I’ll probably get it through Nintendo too.
So wait a minute, this is the game that fans wanted, that they’ve been blasting Nintendo about for months… and now that Nintendo’s saying “Okay, you win, here’s your game”, now the fans are saying “Oh, it’s okay, if it takes you this long to announce the game, we don’t want it anyway”? Ooooh, I feel a rant coming on. And it’s not going to be a nice one.
Do it! There aren’t many of them, but I saw more than a few comments to the tune of “They took too long! I’m buying it used!” Also: “They’re waiting until next year!? Why can’t they release it now!?” This really is the entitlement generation.
If only there was a way to ram my fist through the monitor to hit these people…
I think they’re just resentful for being stringed along for so long. They’ll come to their senses, espically after somebody points out that an overwhelming responce might make NoA think twice about The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower.
Yeah, I’m sure some of them won’t be able to resist walking into Gamestop and picking up a copy come April. Well, if they print enough, because there’s a good chance that it will be small.
I think, for a while, we’ve become so used to games coming out, especially on the PlayStation 2, that it seems unthinkable when a company that used to be faithful in bringing games over starts to withhold their games from us. Sure, the PS2 wasn’t perfect for localizations either. I remember we didn’t get Front Mission 5, and this was after we got both 3 and 4 and even the remake of the first game. But generally, if it was on the PS2, it seemed like we would get it eventually. We even got games that normally wouldn’t make it out west. Sakura Wars ~ So Long My Love, for one thing. Okami for another, and that game was amazing.
I suppose the first real game to pass us by in recent years was Mother 3. No surprise, it’s published by Nintendo, but then again, we always did have a hard time getting any of the Mother games in the first place. So it was safe to assume this was a one time thing…
…except the absences kept on piling up. Is it any wonder gamers are frustrated? Of course this is the entitlement generation. We’ve been trained up to expect all the games that get announced over in Japan will also come to Western shores, aside from the obvious ones that won’t (like most of the dating sims and all of the eroge), and so when games start getting withheld from us despite all the western gaming sites covering them, and despite not falling within the two forbidden categories, it tends to upset gamers. It’s like we’re being told that there are glorious riches being given to our neighbours, but we shouldn’t expect to ever see them, and by the way, we’re not even allowed to buy them from our neighbours, because their riches will not fit in our displays.
Maybe this should also be written up as an article.
Yeah, I kinda hope that negative troll reaction won’t cost us the other two games. I don’t think I own a single game for the Wii that isn’t a sequel, a port, a side-game in a series, or part of a franchise. I shouldn’t have to resort to buying weird-looking puzzle games in order to say that I’m supporting new and original ideas on an otherwise gimmicky console.
One of my favourite screen caps from Steam was from a group of gamers that formed and were planning on boycotting Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for some stupid reason or another. Guess what most of them were playing when the game came out?
It looks like I won’t have to ask my friends in the UK to send me over a copy of this game after all. Which is good because if I’d bought it sooner I might not have had the money to buy it again. Now the hardest part is going be between pre-ordering it at GameStop or directly from Nintendo. I’m tempted by the former since I can always walk into the store and pay on the game in small increments of cash.
I certainly hope the asses who’ve decided “they no longer want” the game are just spouting crap from their mouths. At the very least I’m hopeful the fans who actually want the game will go out and buy it despite the limited purchasing selection.
At the very least a little bit of my faith in Nintendo (just a little) has been restored. Also, a big congratulations to Operation Rainfall for their dogged persistence.
I definitely think we haven’t been getting as many games from Japan because of the horrible exchange rate, especially on handhelds. It’s the reason why Atlus USA has mostly only stuck to their own titles. It blows, but there isn’t much we can do about it.
As for Xenoblade, I’m still thinking the print run for this won’t be very big, so it will be great to see some of the trolls scrambling for a possibly more expensive second-hand copy!
As for the other games, I think there’s a good chance The Last Story will come over too (also in a limited capacity).
Most of them probably are. Final Fantasy gets a lot of hate on the Internet, but given how well it still sells, it makes you wonder how many of the haters are still buying them. I suspect that if there are people saying they used to want Xenoblade Chronicles are just doing so in order to get a reaction from people, and therefore I won’t be writing an article after all.
Yeah, I’m hoping The Last Story comes over. I’ve been curious about the tiger in the promotional material, but I didn’t want to look up spoilers in order to find out more about him/her.
It’s like all of the who complained about how much of an “unnecessary sequel” Final Fantasy XIII-2 is, for instance. I’m sure some of them will skip it, but most will buy it anyway. Heck, they already have it pre-ordered!
I think The Last Story has a good chance at making its way over too. I’m worried about Pandora’s Tower, though.