The thing is, Nintendo of Europe had already made plans to localize the game for that part of the world long before Project Rainfall started. The whole purpose of Rainfall was to get the game released in the US because there would be almost no sane reason not to if all the work for localizing it had already been done in Europe. The same holds true with The Last Story and Pandora's Tower. The games are already translated and have voice-overs, the barrier to "localizing" them for the US couldn't possibly be lower.
Yet, Nintendo still decided to jerk people around and not announce anything about Xenoblade until after Zelda: Skyward Sword had been released. Most probably because they didn't want Xenoblade (which came out about a month before Skyward Sword) competing against Zelda for the Wii during the Christmas season.
Feeling smug and European I went to GAME today, pre-order slip in hand, to pick up my copy of TLS.
Turns out they're not stocking it. At all. They've basically been told to piss off by Nintendo, so the only way I'm going to get my hands on it is to go online and quite possibly fork out bloody loads.
Actually no. GAME can't afford to stock it. GAME is financially fucked. This,closed down 35 stores and refuse to carry UBI soft games for Vita. GAME just sucks right now.Had nothing to do with Nintendo. This was announced days ago. They canned mine just a day before. I still got it from Amazon UK
Maybe it's something beyond Nintendo control. Look at Xenoblade. Only available at Gamestop, Nintendo directly, and now Amazon. First thought: "Why is Xenoblade only selling at Gamestop and etc?" Now let's try a little thought experiment and take the inverse of that question and say: "Why aren't Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and every other big name seller stocking up on a #1 hot Amazon product like Xenoblade?"
"It's too niche!" That's probably your first answer or....sandviches.
But anyway, if it's too niche for a general audience, what explains Fortune Street? I'm hard-pressed to believe a DragonQuest/Mario/Monopoly crossover can garner more sales then a hot fan-favorite title like Xenoblade in a long-standing staple genre such as RPGs from the high-quality delivery of Nintendo no less. As the spotlight shines more on Operation Rainfall, I think we'll see less gamers asking "Why is Nintendo doing etc. and etc?" and more towards "Why aren't Best Buy, Walmart, etc. giving this game a fair shake?" At least in the short term. Maybe possibly opening Pandora's Box to a economic-political side of gaming we always thought was small and maybe irrelevant at one time.
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Huh, thanks for the heads up. The 'piss off from Nintendo' excuse was actually given to me by one of GAME's regional managers who happened to be in-store at the time, though to be fair he didn't seem to know what was happening either.
Anyway, I got it from HMV (who are supposed to be even more financially fucked, lol) so all is well.