Xenoblade U.S. "Pre-orders" will soon surpass Europe and Japan's "total sales"

[Zonned87]

Pre-release copies went out a few days ago to editors, from what ive heard...

NOA has done nothing to the game outside edit the text to American standard English and put it back in its native NTSC format with some minor credit and box alterations.

They think they are doing "fans a favor" by releasing this game and aren't expecting to make any profit on it. They didn't even make separate box art for the US and Canada meaning that even the US version has French on the packaging. This is something you more commonly find from low print titles by niche companies, not Nintendo.

I am hoping we are able to surprise them with a sellout.

[Shizuka]

Honestly, I don't care if the box art or the packaging are the same, I can't think why that'd be a problem for anyone.

[Minneyar]

They think they are doing "fans a favor" by releasing this game and aren't expecting to make any profit on it. They didn't even make separate box art for the US and Canada meaning that even the US version has French on the packaging. This is something you more commonly find from low print titles by niche companies, not Nintendo.

Huh? Almost every single Wii game I have has English, French, and Spanish on the back. I'm looking at Super Mario Galaxy 2 right now and it's got all of them, and that's hardly a low-print title.

[Zonned87]

Huh? Almost every single Wii game I have has English, French, and Spanish on the back. I'm looking at Super Mario Galaxy 2 right now and it's got all of them, and that's hardly a low-print title.

They must vary by region, I live in Illinois both my copy of Galaxy, Galaxy 2 and every other Nintendo game I own is English only.

[Savin877]

All people can expect are NPD numbers from April, which are usually released in May.

You know what is sad though. While NPD #s are definitely more accurate than VGChartz, they are still not 100% spot on. Some industry analysts even say the always adjust for a 10-15% difference either way.

Which is to be expected as copies could be getting sold at any point, or some errors may have been generated when delivering product report quotes. Either way, its sad that we can truly never get 95-100% accuracy in our industry.

Music, TV, and Movies seem to have no problem with it. But heaven forbid the video game industry do it. I wonder what Tom's opinion is?

[Zonned87]

Honestly, I don't care if the box art or the packaging are the same, I can't think why that'd be a problem for anyone.

You would be surprised how irate Americans can get if there is anything other than English on our packages. Alot of the people here don't have tolerance like they do in Canada and Europe. If any (mainstream) game sold in the U.S. has foreign language on it you can bet alot of people will make a big fuss about it.

Copies of games sold in regions with alot of minorities like California and Texas do have dual lingual boxes but they are generally careful not to do it for the greater part of the country.

[Shizuka]

You know what is sad though. While NPD #s are definitely more accurate than VGChartz, they are still not 100% spot on. Some industry analysts even say the always adjust for a 10-15% difference either way.

Which is to be expected as copies could be getting sold at any point, or some errors may have been generated when delivering product report quotes. Either way, its sad that we can truly never get 95-100% accuracy in our industry.

Music, TV, and Movies seem to have no problem with it. But heaven forbid the video game industry do it. I wonder what Tom's opinion is?

At least, that's the most accurate number we could get that doesn't come from Nintendo themselves.

You would be surprised how irate Americans can get if there is anything other than English on our packages. Alot of the people here don't have tolerance like they do in Canada and Europe. If any (mainstream) game sold in the U.S. has foreign language on it you can bet alot of people will make a big fuss about it.

Copies of games sold in regions with alot of minorities like California and Texas do have dual lingual boxes but they are generally careful not to do it for the greater part of the country.

If people are bigots, that's not my problem, and hopefully, they're a minority in the game market.

[conurebleu]

Wow, they are frustrated to see French? What a broad open mind

[Zonned87]

If people are bigots, that's not my problem, and hopefully, they're a minority in the game market.

For a long time the world pretty much revolved around the US gaming market and even Japanese companies put alot of their development effort into games for the US market. We were always the first to get domestic releases and often got Japanese games at the same time or only a short delay from the Japanese release. Those days seem to be fading though as the tastes of US and Japanese gamers seem to be growing apart we are getting localizations slower or not at all while sales domestic games are booming like its the early 80's.

Both sides have their flaws, Japanese games are very linear sometimes lacking exploration or repeating generic storylines while American made games tend to focus to much on action and shooting/killing things and not enough on story or depth. What we really need are games that hybridize good action and gameplay with good story. While I think Xenoblade and The Last Story succeed at this they are still to "japanese themed" to appeal to the wider American audience.

[Shizuka]

What I meant is, from the people that are getting Xenoblade and know a bit of the struggle that was getting the game released in the US, I doubt anyone would complain about seeing french on the box.