Aielyn on 14 December 2012
They're not "slaves" - they're a distribution arm. They have no real say about development, but they do all of the PR, the advertising, the localisation, the shipping, the local manufacturing deals, and the release date selections. Oh, and they probably also deal with American third parties.
Japan can overrule NoA, but I suspect that they mostly only overrule them in order to make sure a game does get released.
Thinking of NoA as a slave is like thinking of, say, California as a slave of the USA.
