PixlBit

Right now I'm playing through Mass Effect 2 and Super Mario 3D Land - both are fantastic. After that...who knows.

You can't compare the American and European game markets - they just aren't the same. And the European sales DID benefit from Operation Rainfall and is the sole reason why the release date was originally bumped up a month - they wanted to capitalize on the movement.

And while I don't have figures I'm basing my assumptions on the fact that no one was talking about the game until Operation Rainfall launched - forums in game sites are filled with comments of people saying they had never heard of the game.

And I didn't say that the mainstream now cares about it - I said the only gamers that were really excited for it were hardcore Wii fans - who have been starved for quality titles - and hardcore JRPG fans. Xbox and PlayStation owners hadn't.

@Kathrine - But they did say they had no plans at the time...

http://www.facebook.com/Nintendo/posts/126089684142160

My point was that Nintendo saw an opportunity in Operation Rainfall to drum up much more interest by letting the kettle boil as it were. Truth of the matter is, not many people wanted this game prior to Nintendo saying "We have no plans at this time..."

It's a classic example of people wanting what they couldn't have. If they made it a regular release it wouldn't have gotten a fraction of the free advertising that it did with Operation Rainfall, Forum threads and editorials like this one. It would have fallen flat and to say otherwise would be ridiculous. And selling special or limited editions of a game that no one has heard of?

If you think everyone knew what Xenoblade was before Operation Rainfall then you're dealing with an extraordinarily small and focused group of people - hardcore Nintendo and JRPG fanatics. That group alone is not big enough to support a release like Xenoblade and Nintendo knew this.

And while no games require the peripheral, the ones that do support it reportedly play markedly better with it. Some have said that playing RE, MH or MGS without it is akin to masochism.

I must admit, these blogs are enticing me to get to this game earlier than I think I otherwise would. Still need to get through Mass Effect 2 though...too many good games.

I see two potential reasons for doing this...

1) They don't really plan on supporting the pad and are only releasing it to make a few developers/fans happy. They would want to limit their production and focus where it's available in that case.

2) There's a 3DS redesign right around the corner and they don't want to spend too much distributing a mass amount of peripherals - they'd rather get you to buy a new system.

That's how I see it. Or it could be a test to roll a limited amount of units out to see what the demand is before a wider release. So I guess it could be three things.

@Darth quite possible. The team has only pushed out two games since 1997 (Ico and Shadow of the Colossus). And with those titles being awesome but not profitable I can totally see Sony banging on his door saying, "What are you doing man? We need to get this game done."

I just hope The Last Guardian doesn't suffer for it. And when the game finally is done, I don't think that Team Ico will be around much longer.

Naughty Dog hasn't steered me wrong yet. I've loved the Crash, Jak and Daxter and Uncharted series. I think this growth to support two teams, similar to what happened at Pixar, will allow for them to develop titles at a more reasonable pace and not potentially ruin a franchise by pumping one out every other year.

Sounds like a plan. I may be getting into it in the next couple of weeks, so I'll let you know when we can start summoning.

I can certainly see how that would be a major pain in the ass and don't understand why a game would restrict you to a single save - particularly in an RPG since that gaming community in particular loves to make multiple saves for the exact reason you mentioned above. Very odd.