Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles Excluded from April NPD Results

[Chozo Ghost]

220k for an unadvertised Gamestop exclusive isn't bad. Had it been given a full blown release at all retailers and with promotional support it might have done 10 times better. So maybe 2.2 million in sales.

Yeah, that never would have happened.  RPGs are still a very niche genre, JRPGs even more so, and Xenoblade (despite the "Xeno-" moniker) is still a new IP .  Being extremely late to the party on Wii after all the RPG fans have gone elsewhere certainly doesn't help as well.  I could see Xenoblade maybe crossing the million-seller threshold with a proper marketing campaign, but there isn't a chance in hell that Xenoblade could have sold 2.2 million copies this late in the Wii's life cycle.

I think we would all agree that Reggie should have released this game a year ago. Whatever it did now, a year ago it would have done much better. So this is Reggie's fault... that, and the delay in bringing over Pikmin 2 as well. Still, better late than never, but he still deserves criticism for being so slow in delivering the fans what they want. It is his job, after all.

[nickmitch]

Does Reggie actually have the final say for which games come out in the US? And the time difference only really affected the number of import sales. This game wasn't destined to be a million seller in the US. That's just a fact.

[NWR_Neal]

Most of what NoA has done different this generation (not releasing Disaster/Another Code/Last Window, the OpRainfall debacle) appears to have been because Reggie has more control.

It could be that he has no say at all, but if that were true, we'd see NoA being a lot more like NoE.

[Ian Sane]

NOA didn't get any negative reputation for not localizing titles until Reggie was in charge.  It's just logical to assume that he is involved in this somehow.

I really like Xenoblade but I can't give NOA pretty much any praise for localizing it.  It took a fan driven campaign and another company to step in before they released it and this was after a very lean year for the Wii where the fans were begging for anything to play and they could easily slotted this in.  Begrudgingly doing what you should done a year ago only after getting nagged and having someone volunteer to help is not worth any sort of pat on the back.

[Chozo Ghost]

I have a bad feeling that when we get well into the next generation there are going to be some really awesome Wii U games coming out in Japan and Europe but because Reggie will still be running the show it will just be the same bullshit all over again and NA fans will have to fight tooth and nail and wait a year or two to get what the other regions already got.

[nickmitch]

If it was all Reggie, then he clearly fucked up and probably knows he fucked up. I doubt he would make the same mistakes in two gens.