Sorry to Rain on the Parade

Operation Rainfall is a fan lead campaign trying to convince Nintendo of America (NOA) to release the Japanese roleplaying games Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower in North America. Despite their best efforts NOA has stated that “there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time.” Now is this good business sense or a missed opportunity?

Xenoblade Chronicles has already been localised and released in the PAL regions. Having played it I can honestly say that it is a fantastic game and deserves to sell well and have a North American release. But simply being a good game isn’t always enough to make a profit and that is what matters to NOA. Since being released Xenoblade Chronicles has sold almost 160,000 units in Japan and looks to reach the 100,000 units mark after ten weeks of sales in the PAL regions. These are not great figures and to be honest I don’t see the game selling much more than 250,000 units in North America, even though it certainly deserves to sell more! Contrast this with Final Fantasy XIII, a game in the same genre and generally considered to be inferior, which managed to sell 6.5 million units worldwide. So why is FFXIII selling but Xenobalde Chronicles not? It comes down to the power of the Final Fantasy name, which makes the decision to not release The Last Story even more bizarre.

The Last Story was directed and co-designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy. It has sold slightly better in Japan than Xenoblade Chronicles (~180,000 units) and received a higher review score in Famitsu, with two of the four reviewers giving it a perfect score. The Last Story has been announced for release in the PAL regions in 2012; with NOA saying that they will look at the sales figures there and then make a decision. Personally I believe that this game would sell around 200,000 and 350,000 units during its first ten weeks in Europe and North America respectively, with global lifetime sales of around 1 million units. These are reasonable figures and would have to make the game profitable. In my personal opinion both Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story will eventually see release in North America, but NOA is going to wait for a release date that will not distract attention and resources away from a guaranteed more profitable venture (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword), I also expect what is eventually released to be identical to the PAL version as I don’t believe it is a financially sound decision to change the voice actors from British to American.

The final game in Operation Rainfall is Pandora’s Tower and to be honest I have no idea why it’s included. The game only received average reviews and hasn’t even managed to sell 100,000 units in Japan. To me the inclusion of Pandora’s Tower seems like a random tacked on third game because people like things that come in threes and it happens to be in the same genre as the other two titles. I really wouldn’t hold my breath for this game to be released outside of Japan.

All sale figures taken from www.vgchartz.com