As the article stated, TFLO is already being primed for Japanese release. What I imagine is that Microsoft hopes TFLO can be the game that makes Japan desperately want an X-Box. I personally imagine they'll find themselves unable to compete with Ragnarok Online.
Phantom Dust, as the article also stated, is going to the Japanese market, probably also to try and convince Japan to buy X-Boxes. I also imagine it'll be marketed heavily at the general Southeast Asian area, which often uses R2 hardware but is generally more open to using an American-made system. I'm thinking Korea and Hong Kong in particular would probably like Phantom Dust.
I recall an anecdote my Japanese-major friend told me about the Japanese dub of big American sitcom "Laverne & Shirley"... the premise and dialogue made so little sense to the Japanese that the translators felt the need to add a little change that would help the show conform more to Japanese tastes.
They added, as a subtitle at the beginning of the title sequence, "These women were just released from an institution for the insane."
I'm not sure a lack of experience is an excuse for a design flaw that severe. If Nokia lacked experience, why didn't they have an R&D team study the design of competing handhelds to get a feel for what gamers would expect? It smacks of a rushed product, and most consumers will feel insulted if offered an obviously rushed product. Why shouldn't gamers feel contempt and distrust for Nokia at this point?
The intensity of the gamer-culture backlash is unwarranted, of course, but gamer-culture has never really had a reputation for being rational or mature.
This is an older phenomenon in Japan, but rising to significance in the US as well.
I'm not sure this is totally comparable. Not many pro seiyuu will work just in video games; they'll also be working in anime, radio, dubbing "foreign" productions like Star Trek, commercials, and live-action TV shows as needed.
That always struck me as more comparable to how a very small cadre of voice actors can be heard in virtually every major American animated TV series and film-- guys like Maurice LaMarche, Dan Castenellata, Frank Welker, etc.
How the hell can a Van Helsing video game be weak?
Word of mouth seems to be saying "by being a generic survival horror title with an unusually poor engine." I've also heard "by being a lame Devil May Cry clone."
DDR was supposedly initially designed as a diet and exercise aid, too. I wonder if it would've been half as successful had the marketing ultimately gone in that direction?
A hot naked man is just the best thing in the world to look at (for me, anyhow). But so many men buy into the bullshit about men just being innately ugly, that they won't even try to make themselves look good. And thus, they do become pretty ugly.
This leads to a needless waste of hot man potential, and it leaves me just a little bit sadder.
Sadly, I have to agree. I worked a stint in a high school library recently, and saw a lot of students who basically just imitated whatever they saw their friends doing with total disregard for whether or not it was a good idea. It seems entirely possible to get into high school and still be thinking on a very concrete, somewhat literalistic level, under which it's okay to do whatever you see people you like doing or whatever seems fun.
The problem is that it's never "just a videogame" that leads kids to commit acts of violence; there's always a lot more going on in their lives that leads up to the act. It's just so hard to convince people of that when the form of the crime explicitly imitates some game scenario or another, and seems to present a "simple" explanation.
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As the article stated, TFLO is already being primed for Japanese release. What I imagine is that Microsoft hopes TFLO can be the game that makes Japan desperately want an X-Box. I personally imagine they'll find themselves unable to compete with Ragnarok Online. Phantom Dust, as the article also stated, is going to the Japanese market, probably also to try and convince Japan to buy X-Boxes. I also imagine it'll be marketed heavily at the general Southeast Asian area, which often uses R2 hardware but is generally more open to using an American-made system. I'm thinking Korea and Hong Kong in particular would probably like Phantom Dust.
I recall an anecdote my Japanese-major friend told me about the Japanese dub of big American sitcom "Laverne & Shirley"... the premise and dialogue made so little sense to the Japanese that the translators felt the need to add a little change that would help the show conform more to Japanese tastes.
They added, as a subtitle at the beginning of the title sequence, "These women were just released from an institution for the insane."
I'm not sure a lack of experience is an excuse for a design flaw that severe. If Nokia lacked experience, why didn't they have an R&D team study the design of competing handhelds to get a feel for what gamers would expect? It smacks of a rushed product, and most consumers will feel insulted if offered an obviously rushed product. Why shouldn't gamers feel contempt and distrust for Nokia at this point?
The intensity of the gamer-culture backlash is unwarranted, of course, but gamer-culture has never really had a reputation for being rational or mature.
This is an older phenomenon in Japan, but rising to significance in the US as well. I'm not sure this is totally comparable. Not many pro seiyuu will work just in video games; they'll also be working in anime, radio, dubbing "foreign" productions like Star Trek, commercials, and live-action TV shows as needed. That always struck me as more comparable to how a very small cadre of voice actors can be heard in virtually every major American animated TV series and film-- guys like Maurice LaMarche, Dan Castenellata, Frank Welker, etc.
How the hell can a Van Helsing video game be weak?
Word of mouth seems to be saying "by being a generic survival horror title with an unusually poor engine." I've also heard "by being a lame Devil May Cry clone."
DDR was supposedly initially designed as a diet and exercise aid, too. I wonder if it would've been half as successful had the marketing ultimately gone in that direction?
A hot naked man is just the best thing in the world to look at (for me, anyhow). But so many men buy into the bullshit about men just being innately ugly, that they won't even try to make themselves look good. And thus, they do become pretty ugly.
This leads to a needless waste of hot man potential, and it leaves me just a little bit sadder.
Sadly, I have to agree. I worked a stint in a high school library recently, and saw a lot of students who basically just imitated whatever they saw their friends doing with total disregard for whether or not it was a good idea. It seems entirely possible to get into high school and still be thinking on a very concrete, somewhat literalistic level, under which it's okay to do whatever you see people you like doing or whatever seems fun.
The problem is that it's never "just a videogame" that leads kids to commit acts of violence; there's always a lot more going on in their lives that leads up to the act. It's just so hard to convince people of that when the form of the crime explicitly imitates some game scenario or another, and seems to present a "simple" explanation.