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Nintendo And Europe - Not Best Of Friends
Thanks to C+VG for their report revealing that Nintendo's e-Reader device for GBA will not be released in Europe. This official confirmation from Nintendo comes after "e-Reader was [originally] confirmed for Europe back in May", and adds to the pain of European gamers still waiting for the multi-language PAL version of Animal Crossing for the GameCube, despite the fact the PAL Australian release is now announced for October, and Aussies still get the e-Reader. Why does Nintendo continue to give consumers a raw deal in Europe?
1. more liberal laws concerning reverse engineering. this could have affected the e-reader decision specifically.
2. less perceived market. this could affect the animal crossing decision specifically.
both of these come down to "risk" for releasing a product. there are costs for releasing a product -- returns, bugs, shelf-ware, etc. it's the reason "Futurama" isn't coming to the Cube (and they can bite my shiny metal ass over that one) -- the perceived risk for releasing the product was too high for the perceived rewards.
MORTAR COMBAT!
.::: Localisation is hardly the problem. EA, Sony, Microsoft they can all handle multiple languages and the like. The problem is that Nintendo wants to do all of that internally. Whereas their competition hires other companies to do that for them. I also don't know why on Earth some people here wnat to take politcal reasons into consideration. The usual route for a game to be released here (Europe) is to be accepted by Japan as well as America. After those releases, the game is usually evaluated, in which they make judgement how it will sell in Europe and release it accordingly. (we've had two exceptions to that; Doshin the Giant and Shining Soul (GBA)). WHY ON EARTH they want to release both products in Australia and not Europe is beyond me however. Not only does Australia practically hate the GC (it's simply not selling at all there), it's ALSO a PAL territory. We get parallel imported Australian titles in the shops here, which simply work, so we'll get AC eventually anyway. However all of this has caused some strong comments concerning Nintendo. Just about everybody on forums and such that I know of and like Nintendo have condemned Nintendo of Europe for this. Not about AC being released in Oz so they can eventually get their hands on it, more that Europe was just skipped altogether. Whatever the reason might be I hope Nintendo really thought it over. Because when even your most dedicated fans turn against you it might become very difficult. In related news; EyeToy sales have risen above both Pokemon sales for the GBA.
There's only one problem with that overview. It's not just Nintendo.. Konami, Capcom, Microsoft, and Sony are little better about getting stuff over to Europe in a reasonable time. I seem to recall a number of PS1 games having really shoddy European ports with bad bordering and framerate issues.
It's an attitude from the entire industry that Europe doesn't really matter. Japan is the most important market and everyone else can suffer for all they care. Hell, the US gets shafted more often than not with the truly innovative or good games. It's all mindset-- the Japanese don't know or care what the rest of the world wants. They'll just release what they THINK will sell, because finding out what really WOULD sell is too much effort.
Multi-language?
Five main languages isn't that hard, really. You'd need five translators on the payroll. The appliances company I worked for simply used their marketing departments overseas to do the translation of their web sites and sent the translations back to the UK for input. I don't see how hard/expensive Nintendo thinks translation must be.
Given how long it takes for translations of most Japanese games, it sometimes seems like they have only 1 translator working on each game, but the reality is that it takes more than that. These aren't appliance manuals (or game manuals for that matter) we're talking about here, it's all of the text in the game and the voices, at the minimum. Animal Crossing doesn't need voice translations, but definitely a lot of text, and then you'd be stuck with Japanese or American holidays and items if they didn't do any localization beyond language translation.
Different display format?
Aussies are quite happy with PAL as well.
Japan and US both use NTSC, Aussies are in the same boat as Europe most of the time.
Different regional legislation?
Slap on a blood patch for Germany. Hang on, Nintendo haven't had any blood in their games in the UK since they begun. They haven't been censoring us have they?!
Check the 'M' rated games on the GC. The rest usually don't have problems, though, and I doubt it's much of a discussion for most of them. That being said, it's still something that has to be dealt with by some developers, regardless of what console they're using.
Different cultures
This argument I simply couldn't buy. Tastes are different everywhere. UK tastes are different to US, US is different to Japan. I can't name one country that has radically different games they enjoy than the rest of Europe.
Animal Crossing specifically is highly culture-oriented, and requires a great deal of changes in the port. Japan doesn't even port a large number of their games to the US (which still has NTSC so just needs the english translation for the lowest port) because of perceived (and sometimes very real) cultural differences. Anyone that's really interested in those titles either gripes about it forever or imports it.
There are only two answers. Nintendo is incompentant in Europe and arrogant towards Europe. It has always given Europe the shaft; it's not a new idea for them. Seeing as all the excuses they could come up with are as thin as Japanese paper walls, I have to say that the split must be 50:50 between the two issues. They don't need Europe, they're only the third biggest games market. They're a company trying to save cash, when in fact they're pushing themselves further over the edge by cutting out a major territory. Their business plan consists of: "If it ain't no work to convert, then ship it 6 months later and clamp down on importers in the mean time!" No joke, they sent cease and desist letters to all importers last month trying to get them all to stop selling the games that Euro Nintendo users want but can't get.
Total. Bloody. Genius.
Talk to Nintendo Europe, then, just like we in the US bitch at Nintendo of America for not bringing in more games (thankfully they made the decision to bring back Metroid, which doesn't do well in Japan). Nintendo's business plan when it comes to ports is primarily 'let the locals (meaning NoA, NoE, etc) do it'.
As for Europe being the third biggest game market: while it may be that, it's also a fragmented market, because you have to translate to multiple languages and deal with cultural diversity for the sales. If you simply took the US version and made some minor adjustments (and the PAL conversion) for the UK market you could probably get most of the money you're going to get from Europe without the extra cost of translating to French, Spanish, Dutch, German, etc. but then people would still bitch about it.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Fair point, well made. I certainly think this is true of Konami: Where exactly is the GC version of Winning Eleven? The GC is crying out for a decent football game.
Do you not think that Microsoft, for all the Xboxes failings, have done a pretty decent job in getting games here in an almost reasonable time? I don't recall the last time I heard someone complain that such and such was out in the US, but the game's release in Europe was any greater than about three months. Xbox Live has gotton off to a decent start as well, something I thought was certain to be implemented half-arsed over here.
I'd hazard that about 60% of wanted games from Nintendo clock in at a longer lead time than that. I think three months is pretty much the magic barrier on how long the lower-hardcore (educated gamers, but not desparately clawing for every game straight away) are prepared to wait before they end up in importing instead.
What are your thoughts on this?