Ever since I was a kid most of the games I wanted to play were always released in Japan first. As I got older I understood why. Japan had the biggest fan base and most of the developers were Japanese, or Japanese influenced. It made sense, even financially. But things have changed. Japan is still overwhelmingly into games, but the rest of the world has caught on. Don't get me wrong. I understand when their is a few days difference in between release dates for different countries. But months? Or even up to a year? That's ridiculous! The game I am referring to currently is Final Fantasy XIII. They have been working on this game for years, and I'm sure that it's not that hard to translate it into Enlish( or any other language for that matter). This is absurd. As a gamer I am always happy to have as many people enjoying video games as possible, and it is awesome to discuss games with people around the world. I guess we will have to wait a little longer..... much longer actually. Apparently some people are better than others. I didn't realize that a caste system in the video gaming world would be allowed to exist. To knowingly exclude the rest of the world for months. How is this possible?............. Am I wrong? It's not about sales. FF XIII will probably sell at least as good aroung the world as in Japan ................... So what gives?

Final Fantasy is a game with tons of dialogue, and in development that dialogue is written in Japanese. Translating that for western audiences can take months. There are dozens of games made by western companies that get released in Japan long after they are released in America or PAL.

How is Japan favored? For other than some japanese games that is. There is a lot of western games that are never released in Japan too...

I, too, am shocked that Japanese games get released in Japan first.

 That's because they don't like violent games. Like no more heros. It was censored over there

Localization is a bitch.  It's a long, painful, mind numbing process that just takes A LOT of time.  Worse yet, it tends to be something that comes towards the end of the project because any text changes means that text changes must be made for every language (and there are many text changes even at the end of the project).

Simple:

Japan gets Japanese games 1st
USA gets US games 1st
Europe gets EU games 1st

Usually it's that way, mainly because of language issues, but also, because of PAL conversion (PAL to NTSC, NTSC to PAL), hopefully, someday this won't be an issue...

That's a common misconception. The Japanese and EU versions of the game were not censored. The blood and gore was ADDED to the US version. It's not that Japan dislikes violent games, it's that the US loves violence more than anyone else.

White man totally oppressed in games industry. Haven't heard that one before, thanks for the cheer.

Japanese games get released in Japan first sometimes???? HOLY SHIT!!!

Same happens in the US and EU sometimes...