Well, they did cite Miiverse requests when they brought Earthbound to Eshop.

As for no reason to doubt it will come, Fatal Frame 4 didn't, and the Wii remake of Fatal Frame 2 never made it to NA. I'm not saying it won't come, but I feel I have reason to be concerned.

That's 100% Reggie talking out of his ass, though. That fan campaign was not small, and they released the exact same games as per the campaign even though something like Pandora's Tower was utterly unknown outside of Operation Rainfall and had no reason to actually see western release. (Thank god it did, that game was fucking good. Its the only Majora's Mask/Dark Souls-esc IP on Nintendo's consoles.)

I'd put down five bucks on Iwata or Miayamoto flipping a few tables over the phone.

Actually, the campaign was very small. The official petition managed to accumulate fewer than 8,000 signatures. Compare that to, for instance, the Operation Moonfall campaign to convince Nintendo to remake Majora's Mask for no reason, which has amassed over 50,000 signatures.

Also, Xenoblade is the only game Nintendo localized. They did nothing with The Last Story or Pandora's Tower -- those were localized by XSeed, who also claimed Operation Rainfall had no effect on their decision. They didn't really give a direct explanation for their decision regarding Pandora's Tower, but it sounds like the decisive factor was the sales success of The Last Story. I guess both parties are talking out of their asses though, even though it would arguably portray them in a better light to say that they were listening to the fans.

That's true. They may have changed their tune a bit recently. Anyway, concerned fans used similar reasons to doubt whether Fire Emblem Awakening would be localized, and although Nintendo dilly-dallied on that announcement, I was confident that it would come and in the end it did. You've just got to recognize the difference between a remake late in a console's life and a brand-new installment early in a console's life, especially a struggling console.

The signatures were small in number, but people knew about the game, but I guess you're right that the physical form of the Operation was small.

Mayhaps I have simply muddled history in my own head.

EDIT: Thanks for putting up info!

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.

I really hope you are right.

Fire Emblem is a bigger franchise than Fatal Frame, but you'd think with the game droughts they are suffering it should be common sense for Nintendo to full the gaps with imports. Not to mention I doubt FF5 will make its budget back in just Japan; this isn't the Wii where production is cheap, this is HD development we're talking about. Then again, common sense hasn't been NIntendo's strong suit in the last three years...

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.

You're right. While working on The Last Story, XSeed themselves said they had no intent to localize Pandora's Tower, regardless of fan support or sales of The Last Story. Then the game became their biggest success ever, and suddenly they were all over Pandora's Tower. It's a curious situation.

If Pandora's Tower was localized because The Last Story sold well, then we must ask a much more difficult question, and ultimately the only question that matters: regardless of its effect on localization decisions, did Operation Rainfall impact sales of the games it was campaigning for? I don't think we can answer this question. I think it's downright impossible to have a definitive answer. I can only speak for myself -- I doubt I would have heard of these games if not for the Operation, and I bought all three.

In the end, if Operation Rainfall can be said to be responsible for any of those three games being localized, I think it would be for Pandora's Tower. Not because of any petitions or tweets or Facebook pages, but because of the sales success of The Last Story. We can't definitively attribute that success to Operation Rainfall, but going with my gut feeling here, I think it did have a... reasonably significant impact.

I'm really hoping the game sells well in Japan. You're right that the series is much smaller than Fire Emblem, but Fatal Frame V is looking good on COMG. If it can sell well enough, I'll be getting strong Awakening vibes from this one.

Based on this half-hour of gameplay, I'm not really sold on it. Hopefully it's just for the tutorial, but the UI seems to be really in-your-face. I don't know how I could be scared while looking at a big picture of the Wii U GamePad. That kind of breaks the atmosphere for me.