Arstechnica- When Nintendo announced last year that it would not be bringing cult classic Japanese RPG Xenoblade Chronicles to North America, it was no surprise that the decision drew heavy Internet protest from a subgroup of dedicated gamers. After all, groups of gamers are constantly banding together online to demand everything from LAN support in Starcraft II to a Full House game.
But Operation Rainfall, as the Xenoblade protest group came to be known, differed from other grassroots gamer protests in one important way: it worked. Not only has Nintendo given Xenoblade Chronicles a North American release date of April 2, but the company announced last week that The Last Story, another Japanese RPG the group has been pushing to see release in North America, will come across the ocean this summer through publisher XSEED games.
The success of Operation Rainfall shows that a small group of niche gamers can occasionally effect change from a big-name game publisher, as long as they're willing to keep up the pressure and do a bit of out-of-the-box promotion.
Xenoblade Chronicles composer Kenji Hiramatsu reflects on his work and feels that it's "time for a fresh start."
Tetsuya Takahashi has revealed his plan to make the next Xenoblade vastly different from previous games.
I liked the Xenoblade X formula. It takes awhile, but opening up Mechs was amazing. Especially once you can fly them, and use them in battle. You have to put some time into the game to do it, but it's worth it!
Also, the graphics were more realistic than the other games. Still looks good today, just a lot more pop-in than is acceptable today, hell even too much for back then. It wasn't game breaking though.
Xenoblade 1-3 and X are so great. That said, I'm ready for them to do a big change up.
Some of the best Switch JRPG games out there include the epic Xenoblade Chronicles to the hard-as-nails Dark Souls Remastered.
Me being a Playstation guy and a huge JRPG fan, I can say that the only franchises I actually miss that are on Switch are The Fire Emblem series and The Xenoblade Chronicles series. I've played neither but I've heard good things. I've seen people play Xenoblade Chronicles games on youtube, and it seems like they think it's a big deal so I'm curious.
I agree with top 1, for me xenoblade chronicles 3(and 2) is one of the greatest jrpg to date. It's like the feeling of playing ff7 on ps1 for the first time again. Imagine if XC3 was done with ps5 graphics, that will be magical. I might get the xc remaster before the year ends or after I got the platinum trophy of GoW ragnarok.
There was a game drought on the wii so wii fans were upset. The wii will be experiencing another drought until the wii u is released so it needs any proper games it can get. I own a 3ds and a wii so I know that there are often times where it'll be many months until something for the core is released.
Hopefully Nintendo apologists won't try to spin facts because if the system was getting enough proper games then there wouldn't be such an uproar for some import titles. To each their own, I like to play games cause I can't play sales numbers
That was a good read. In the end Nintendo always does right by its fanbase. Never leaving an elite gamer behind. With the that positive attitude another example was just given to why you can put your trust into Nintendo.
Innovating the landscape one day at a time.
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Congrats to them, it's always a win when gamers of whatever platform can band together and get developers/publishers to give into our demands. Though, like the article stated, we rarely win. which brings up my next point. If these two games do not sell well in the west, forget about Nintendo folding to us again.
nintendo isnt bringing the last story over, no one convinced them to bring it over, xseed is bringing it over, not nintendo. nintendo is bringing xenoblade over though, but dont give credit to nintendo for the last story, they're not bringing that over
xenoblade is worth every cent you pay for it ..don't waste this chance america !!