Come on lazy Americans, go and buy the last great Wii game
Make yourself proud!

It was a real wake up call for nintendo. Now one needs to be done for namco and the tales series.
Personally, im now blocking each and every namco game until they decide to bring tales of innocence R and tales of hearts R in the west. I dont buy the excuse that the vita is the problem when Ragnarok Odyssey sold more in the US and EU than it did in japan.
I got tired of beeing treated like a second rate customer, so now i treat namco as a second rate company. One im not interested in anymore.

What really confuses me is the expectations. As touche don in the original post. These games sold as well or better in NA than they did in JP. My guess is localization of a title is a fraction of the cost of the initial development. So, why wouldn't a company like Nintendo rush to do so given the odds of making a profit are pretty good?

I think Operation Rainfall was huge in this movement and no doubt in my mind at least 2 (Last Story and Pandora's Tower) would never have seen the light of day without it. Xenoblade was 50/50 to me as the strongest title of the bunch so hard to imagine they would have let it rot forever, but OR likely pushed it to come over earlier than it would have otherwise.