| cleveland124 said: Also Noname, games aren't in a vacuum. Nintendo has dozens of teams working on dozens of different projects at a time. Their goal is not to accept any project that could make them money but to spend their resources on what will make the most money. Odds are that none of those titles you mentioned are going to light up the sales chart. As such, if one development team had some available time and you know the following. 1. Average price of a game in Europe is $50 Euros, even with the recent recovery of the dollar, this is 40% higher than the cost of similiar game in the U.S. 2. The European region is most likely going to end this generation as the top sales/revenue earner in revenue. Which region are you going to have them make the port to? Europe is going to win in a case of limited resources. |
Granted that efficiently allocating resources is the key to maximizing profits. My problem is that I still don't see what's changed between now and before that's causing localization in America to be less efficient than before.I really don't think there is any.
And I really don't think this has anything to do with Europe: European localization is handled by NoE, not NoA, and the growth in the European market means Nintendo now has an extra field to reap, not that it must somehow choose between localizing in one or the other.
As to some of the games not lighting up the charts, I don't buy that argument either. I've already stated my case on Fatal Frame and Disaster, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell me that games like Band Bros. or Mother 3 (post Smash Bros. exposure) wouldn't do well enough in the Americas. On the flip side, they've decided to localize games like Magical Starsign and Cubivore DS (Walmart only...). Companies, including Nintendo, are constantly releasing games that see only a modest profit; blockbusters are few and far between, and the release of things like Captain Rainbow and Sin & Punishment 2 tells me Nintendo knows this as well as anyone.
Simply put, none of those explanations are adding up either, at least not as far as I can see. What am I missing?
