I don't understand why Bioware wouldn't try out the Asian markets. It seems like they favor these RPG type games far more than other genres. Does anyone know if there is a release date for MS or any plans to bring it to Asian markets?

I think it should
oblivion do very will in japan
in my opinion Mass Effect is much better than oblivion and the attak style similar to Lost plant which sell 0.9
no mind if it add 100K ..

I think the major problem with the 360 in Japan is it's HUGE emphasis on guns... Maybe they should replace all the guns in Mass Effect with swords THEN  it will sell massive ammounts :D.

yaeh ...
maybe they should call shepard " Mario "
and the others " pokemon "
and the title should be " Mass Fantsy Effect "



* made in JAPAN

lol^^

I can't find any information on this

Where is MrStickball? He usually has a handle on what 360 titles are headed to Japanese market and when. I agree that ME should be brought to the Asian markets. Its an excellent game and I think it would to relatively well on the 360 in Japan.

Mass Effect has huge amounts of dialogues and voice acting, so it would be pretty expensive to localize. Also too little grinding and too much freedom of choice for it to do well in Japan.

I didn't think about that...So does that mean in the countries of France, Italy, Germany, so on, that they already have translated ME into their languages?

Trust me, with the "way" Mass Effect is (very similar in gameplay to......Phantasy Star Universe), it will definately come out in Japan.

However, I have absolutely no idea when. Most likely, it wasn't planned from the beginning (unlike Halo 3, or Gears of War, which were both released rather quickly in both cases).

According to www.gamefaqs.com Bioshock is coming out in Febuary next year. That means that there was "about" a 6 month delay for translation.

Because of that, I would expect 6 months. EA has been known to port over a good bit of their franchises, regardless of sales. So in a way, the EA aquisition should help out in this case.

I would "think" that ME was/has been translated into various non-English languages. However, the localization process for Japan is vastly, vastly, different (and vice versa). The translation costs are a bit steeper, since Japanese isn't a language that can be easily translated (ie, the text interfaces. Atleast in French, or any European language, you still use the similar english character sets).

A good game to look at, would be Oblivion. It took Bethsada.....What? 1 year and 2 months? I'm not saying that any other Western game will take that long, but it is a good note.

Basically, because Oblivion has litterally paved the way for Western games in Japan that aren't MS-driven. No game before that did very well (sans Gears and Halo), and Oblivion just randomly does ~125k on the X360/PS3, despite being a hardcore Western RPG.

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After a bit of Googling, I turned up the following Kotaku article:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/lingo/mass-effect-bioshock-turning-japanese-267398.php

Appearently, the Japanese gamers made a petition to bring Oblivion to Japan. The same petition is now going around for Bioshock (with a 2/28/08 release date). So I would expect Mass Effect in Japan around March or April.

Honestly? I think Mass Effect will do great there. It was one of my "big 3" to watch out for in Japan (Western games getting some sales in the East). I think 100k sales is definately plausible, since the Japanese love a good Sci-Fi game.