| the_dengle said: 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. |
This is true, but all the same I keep looking back on Pandora's Tower. The title is incredibly obscure and, as far as I'm aware, was entirely unheard of until it got picked up as part of Rainfall. Last Sotry and Xenoblade, particularly the latter one, were well known titles from well known developers/studios of the jRPG genre. Pandora's Tower was a little known title and yet, out of nowhere, it gets localized.
