spemanig said:
outlawauron said:
I'm speaking specifically about Yakuza, not games that are targeted towards the mainstream. Even if you were to ask people why they liked the games you listed, voice acting would never be the top answer.
Have you played a Yakuza title? A game set in Japan about Japanese organized crime in red light districts with idols, hostess clubs, pachinko machines, and crane games doesn't scream mainstream. The people interested in Yakuza aren't the people who are going to ignore it because doesn't have English voice acting. I'm not saying it shouldn't have dual audio, because that's ultimately the goal with all localizations. To make that the reason as to why it won't be successful is just silly. Sega goes this route because they spent the money on an English dub and it did terribly. Yakuza 3 and 4 both sold better than 1 without the dub.
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A bad dub did terribly. A good dub wouldn't. It doesn't matter where it's set. There are tons of media here from Japan, set in Japan, that are widely successful here, and none of them are undubbed. None-of-them. It has nothing to do with being mainstream. It's everything to do with shooting yourself in the foot. Japanese VA is alienating to the majority of consumers who don't speak Japanese. And there's nothing "mainstream" about any of those franchises innately. But they were localized with dubs, and they did well because of it. None of them would have without it.
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Well, alienating large potential markets would be bad if that would actually be the case for Yakuza. I'm quite thankful you're not handling this, because the series wouldn't have made it this far with you wanting to spend money on a good dub (which is the case for less than 10% of localized games?). Honestly, I think sales would suffer more if they decided to not include Japanese voice acting than excluding an English dub (as Koei Tecmo learned and apologized for with Atelier Ayesha).
I think you're out of touch with the people who are going to buy these games and naive enough to believe that things like an English dub is what's holding back the series from blockbuster success.
