Half an hour of Fatal Frame 5 gameplay

[the_dengle]

Vena said:

the_dengle said:

Actually, the campaign was very small. The official petition managed to accumulate fewer than 8,000 signatures. Compare that to, for instance, the Operation Moonfall campaign to convince Nintendo to remake Majora's Mask for no reason, which has amassed over 50,000 signatures.

Also, Xenoblade is the only game Nintendo localized. They did nothing with The Last Story or Pandora's Tower -- those were localized by XSeed, who also claimed Operation Rainfall had no effect on their decision. They didn't really give a direct explanation for their decision regarding Pandora's Tower, but it sounds like the decisive factor was the sales success of The Last Story. I guess both parties are talking out of their asses though, even though it would arguably portray them in a better light to say that they were listening to the fans.

The signatures were small in number, but people knew about the game, but I guess you're right that the physical form of the Operation was small.

Mayhaps I have simply muddled history in my own head.

It's tough to say. A lot of people assumed the Operation was a "success" because the games were localized, and indeed that was its intent. There hasn't been a whole lot of discussion as to whether or not the Operation directly contributed to its own success. Most followers seemed content to assume that it did. It's really difficult to pin down the exact causes of the localization decisions, perhaps even for the companies themselves. I'm sure there were a lot of factors they were considering, and the fan support was certainly noticed.

As you mentioned, the executives can't exactly be considered perfectly trustworthy sources in such a case. But Reggie and XSeed were both asked separately about the matter, and gave similar answers. Reggie's comment about how "100,000 signatures doesn't mean 100,000 sales" rings true, and when you see extremely large fan campaigns of that size (such as the Mega Man Legends 3 one) having no success, it makes me wonder whether 8,000 signatures would ever be taken remotely seriously by a major publisher like Nintendo, or even a smaller one like XSeed.