Doesn’t Xenoblade look glorious in HD? Admittedly, even though the game looks fantastic, I’ll take Xenoblade any way I can get it… even if it means I was forced to play it on a five inch television. I just want Nintendo of America to bring the game over here!
Thanks to TJ for the tip!
Some Nintendo fans believe that if games such as Xenoblade didn’t make their way to North America, perhaps a third-party publisher could step in to localize content. Like XSEED. In reality though, the possibility of XSEED localizing any Nintendo title isn’t great.
When asked if working on Solatorobo opened channels of communication with Nintendo of Europe, Ken Berry, Director of Publishing told Siliconera:
“No, actually. Everything, all of our communication, is done directly with Namco Bandai of Japan. Yeah, we’ve never licensed a title from Nintendo before, so I would think the prospects of that happening would be very slim.”
I realize that the question was specific to Nintendo of Europe, but I’m sure Berry’s answer also applies to Nintendo of America.
There’s some speculation going around that Nintendo plans to release both Xenoblade and The Last Story in North America. The possibility of Pandora’s Tower also launching stateside is unknown. Apparently localization for Xenoblade is already complete while The Last Story is currently being translated into English.
I’m a bit skeptical of this information, though at least it revitalizes hope once more. However, this does contradict a report from a couple of weeks ago in which Nintendo’s French lead manager said that the Xenoblade didn’t make an apperance at E3 because Nintendo of America wasn’t interested in showing product that they don’t intend to sell.
The story behind the rumor is also somewhat skeptical since it supposedly comes from a trusted source inside Nintendo (that’s not exactly difficult to fabricate!). It’d probably be wise to take this latest speculation with a huge grain of salt for now.
The only type of real demos we’ve seen on a Nintendo service thus far have come through the Wii Shop Channel. Unfortunately, the process of actually downloading content can be tedious and it doesn’t help that demos are automatically removed after a few weeks. On the bright side, it sounds like Satoru Iwata might be open to changing Nintendo’s demo methods in the future.
“…Additionally, when Nintendo would like to ask users to try a specific new game, we should deliver it to their Nintendo 3DS, and possibly Wii U, with their prior consent and recommend that they just try it and, if they like it, they can pay for it. In this way, we need to introduce users to unknown products. Consumers are likely to be convinced to pay about 5,000 yen for a well-established franchise product, but not all the people are willing to pay a certain amount of money for an innovative but unknown product. Now is the time to prepare for these situations. We would like to respond to some of the concerns surrounding our business in this manner.”
I could see this happening very easily on the 3DS and I imagine it could be easy to implement on Wii U. Demos for both retail and downloadable games are heading to the eShop later this year, but it would be great if there was an option to automatically receive demos. It’d probably be demos that Nintendo selects, but it could be an great feature.
