Operation Rainfall

[Leinad]

I did check for other topics beforehand, as I realise this is pretty much old news, however I did not find any topic explicitly about the petition itself, but rather a mention of one of the games contained within it, Xenoblade.

For those of you not in the know, Operation Rainfall is an attempt to bring three games to the North American market. These three games are the aforementioned Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower. For those of you who care about Famitsu, their scores were 36, 38 and 31 out of 40 respectively, and by all other accounts that I have heard they're pretty good games. More importantly than that, the games are all for the Wii, a system that I think everyone here knows hasn't had much in the way of good games in a while, and they are all being translated into English for the European market. Hell, Xenoblade is already out over here in the UK, but I haven't gotten around to getting a copy yet. I intend to right after I finally get the 3DS I've been dragging my heels about getting for months.

Now for those of you who are wondering why I'm bringing this up; for one, that link up there is for the official Operation Rainfall site, which contains a link to their petition, which I've just signed and which I'm hoping those of you who do want to see this game released in the US have either already signed, or are about to. Secondly, one of these games is already out in Europe and the other two are coming out next year, and I'm hoping to encourage people to buy these games so as to potentially show Nintendo that there is potential for them in the US. Thirdly, I'm usually several months behind on anything that's happening, so it's entirely possible that the world has been taken over by lobster men and I haven't noticed yet. Not that that's actually relevant, but it should probably be said.

Nintendo has already responded to Operation Rainfall, which given Nintendo's past record for ignoring petitions to release their RPGs in the west is a remarkable thing, and clearly shows that Nintendo is listening; they're just not giving in yet. Quite frankly, neither should we. We are the gamers. We are the ones who have been playing videogames for large portions of our lives and who love the medium. We are the ones who buy the most games proportionally of any other potential demographic, and yet the Nintendo Wii appears to ignore our interests, with hundreds of games for casual players and yet very few games aimed at those of us who game regularly. Whereas catering to an audience that doesn't have the same relationship as most of us with videogames isn't necessarily a bad thing, we still deserve to have some attention paid to us, especially those of us who are long time Nintendo fans. When we want a game that has already been released, Nintendo should be jumping at the opportunity to sell us this game. I understand Nintendo has struggled in the past to sell units of games such as Earthbound, but with the correct advertising and given the attention already brought to these games, and the increase in our dependency on reviews to pick out games, and internet culture, and the increased popularity of RPGs, I believe it is important for Nintendo to release these games, as they will almost certainly find a suitable audience and sell appropriately.

In summary, we are the consumers. If the developers and publishers have released a game that we want in a foreign market, but refuse to release it here, then we do have the power to change that and we should be exercising that power. Thank you for reading my long-winded statement.

Also for those of you who skipped to the end, that link up there will get a bunch of good RPG's brought out in the US on the Wii. Click it and sign their petition.

[Cosmonautical]

Mod your system and import a copy.