So Oblivion was localized after a petition, but BioShock and Mass Effect will be localized without any petition. These are all big games for the 360 and Microsoft needs to make as big a dent in the Japanese market as it possibly can, and AAA games are the best way to do so.
Examples like this could possibly be cases of correlation being mistaken for causation.
In fact, in this case companies may claim it's causation even when it's not, just because that would make the petition signers (who are also among the target consumers) happy with themselves, and it's also good PR for the company.
I don't know anything about these specific examples, but I think it's fairly certain any changes like this those based on whether it's a sound business decision or not ($$), not based on online petitions.
We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai
It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps
We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick
