Bring on Those JRPG Titles

The immature kid in me read it as "bring on those JRPG titties" and immediately thought of Calista from The Last Story. :3

It really just comes down to money - how much it'll cost to localize, how much it'll cost to market and how much is left to do so after localization, and how much the companies make from selling the game. From what I've read, localization is not cheap, nor is decent marketing, and not a lot of people buy JRPGs anymore unless it's Final Fantasy (and speaking of Final Fantasy.... man I wish some other JRPG company had the money Square had when making those unreal advertisements for Final Fantasy 7). Because most JRPGs this generation haven't sold all that well outside of Japan, that tells everyone to be a lot more cautious about JRPGs.

I dare say part of it is stagnation. Valkyria Chronicles, Resonance Of Fate and the Tales series are the only ones making any attempt at keeping up with the times. Everything else feels like they belong in the early/late 90s, with the only real difference being graphical. I doubt a lot of people wanted to play games similar to Final Fantasy 7 that they felt wouldn't have had the magic it had. While you could (and most certainly would) make the argument that first person shooters have been stagnating and then wonder why they still sell like hotcakes, well, for one thing, shooters have only really been stagnating for the past 5 or 6 years while JRPGs have been at it for over a decade and a half, and another thing is that what shooters stagnate in is still appealing to the American/European public - the whole multiplayer thing. Meanwhile, what JRPGs stagnate in (grinding and the tropes their stories and characters have) don't appeal to them but they do appeal to the Japanese public.

(feel free to replace Final Fantasy 7 with Pokemon if the latter was your first RPG. Final Fantasy 6 was my first but 7 was a lot of peoples' firsts so... yeah).

If Disasters had sold tons of copies in Japan or especially Europe it would have been brought over. I also recall a rumor that Nintendo was hesitant to bring the game due to some of the recent disasters in the US, like Katrina or even 9/11.

I think one thing people tend to leave out when talking about JRPGs is that the Japanese market and therefore its developers have begun focusing much more heavily on the handheld market. The best JRPG games of this gen. (opinion, obviously) were on DS, and the high number of RPGs on PSP were what kept it afloat in Japan. Western markets are still far more console focused, so these major games have less of an impact over here. Western Developers and reviewers still have a bias towards handheld gaming, thinking it more of a minor diversion when they are away from their consoles, so when something like Dragon Quest 9 or World Ends with You shows up it lacks the impact of something on a console. I think in this regard NoA has done a really good job in localization this past gen., bringing a lot of more Japanese titles over. Glory of Heracles, Rhythm Heaven, EBA, lots of stuff we wouldn't have gotten before, and unfortunately they got screwed on sales of most.

Anyway, I hope the eShop and retail titles on it will make this a thing of the past. Kinda like Denpamen or the Guild01 games on 3DS, its a lot less risky to bring a title over digitally and recoop localization costs without worrying about retailers not stocking a game and having inventory produced and sitting around.