"... it was thought that Replicant [the girly version] might be suitable for the French..."

oh my lol

I realy dont like girlie looking characters, which Is probably why I cant get into JRPG's

So Instead of having Muscle Bound Meatheads as leads why cant the just make average looking ones????

and appeal to all gamers

I like it how they just generalised every single western country with the exception of France.

Now lets take a look at some popular western characters from games.



Oh wait, he's a scientest that isn't built?



Oh wait, he's got an awesome ass? Again not heavily built.



sure he's big, but not in an over the top way.

My main point here is that for every Gears of War, or Kratos there are plenty of chatacters who aren't overly mucho in their design.

Lets not forget that Mario is the most popular video game character in the west and he's a fat plumber.

Or pac man. Which is another hugely popular Japanese video game character who also isn't mucho.

Did somebody say Macho?

With games like Infamous, Uncharted SE is so right.

SE decided to advertise FFXIII box art like this in NA and Europe(i think).

you can clearly see Lightning showing off her happy parts. You can even see more on the 360 box art.

Ofcoz there is nothing wrong with it, but don't you see what they are trying to do?

This is one of SquareEnix biggest problems. They're trying to make games for 2 different markets, and failing with a lot of them.

They need to go back to doing what they did best. Making games that focused on the Japanese market and instead, market the games better in America. Their major problem is a lack of marketing, not 'wah, America doesn't like our games!'

A large part of the reason SquareEnix probably built up this image that JRPGs and 'certain things' don't sell well outside Japan anymore is simply because they stopped supporting their own JRPGs except Final Fantasy.  They need to look at their own companies practices and stop blaming American tastes.

They did do TV commercials for IU, TLR, and SO4 but those games didn't do really well at all.  Probably because the majority didn't have high opinions for those games.

Nier worked in the West...... not.

And with those RPGs, they were trying to focus on the 'American' market instead of focusing on the market that supported them and made them popular for the previous 20 years.  Heck, Star Ocean has never been a series that focused on the American fanbase.  It even has an Anime in Japan.

Hopefully SE will get the message.