Alleged Racism Claims against SEGA

I don't believe it for a second. Some person is just mad and thought they'd try and stir up unnecessary dramatics.

• Source: TSSZ News Beyond Blue
• Published: 5/30/2013

 

I don' t know much about Sega, even less about PSO, but I wouldn' t be surprised if there was some truth behind those claims. I mean :

That much at least can be said of many Japanese developers.

Now don' t take me wrong, I realize that there are economic and marketing factors involved and that this simple fact doesn' t necessarily imply any nationalist motivation on their part. However I can' t help but notice that, 25 years after the "Here' s the game in English. Don' t speak it ? Sucks to be European." Nes/Master System era, Americans have drastically improved at localization. All their games now come fully translated, most often without any delay. Not to mention they' ve barely ever scraped any content from their European releases. However Japanese games released in Europe fully translated and/or without any delay are a very rare treat. After all the years they' ve had to catch on I can only think of three explanations : incompetence, stupidity, or nationalism. Or a mix of those. It doesn' t look good either way.

Japanese are very nationalist overall, it' s not exactly a secret. Loosing more and more ground to western developers might have left a few of them a tad butthurt. Ever heard of Galapagos RPG ?

 

I don't believe it to be that. I believe it's more a concept of 'focus on the main market (Japan) whilst making a cheap quick buck from the less concerned market (foreign)'.
So.... it's just a fact of the times. Japanese games aren't being released abroad as much, foreign sales are not be relied upon. It's like a WRPG trying to sell itself in Japan, it's just not a main market focus because it will cost more than profit them. It's the way of the times.

I doubt racism would be included into this, SEGA has long had a western fan base. They might be able to fob them off for business reasons, but i doubt it's vindictive. Still, we'll never really know.

 

Though I do agree with you libre about games not being made in the U.S. compared to Japan, I disagree on the market. Nintendo released recently "Xenoblade Chronicles" at 100,000 or a million. Some ridiculously low number. I wanted to get it because of the good reviews and found it on Amazon for over 200 bucks new and over a hundred used. Gamestop pretty much flat-out said that there's going to be no more copies made despite the VERY high demand for the game in the U.S. market.

Japan might have it's reluctance to sell their games overseas, or the company's here are refusing them. *I've heard wonderful things about the Wii in Japan compared to the U.S. and all the party games we got, but I don't know if it's true* But there's at least a hefty market for some of the games. Beserk: Sign of the Falcon is popular and never came over. There was a HUGE petition for Mother 3 and that's been blown over. The market for the games is wanted, but it's not being shipped here.

Maybe it's racism, maybe it's just that Sega is still going down the tubes and they're cutting a lot of corners for their business to continue. I don't know.

 

I disagree, the fact there's been tons of petitions from fans for several games that haven't been released out in the U.S. shows that there's been a demand. Mother being one of the most famous after the Earthbound game. Xenoblade being another one that really was underestimated and now is hurting sales because of it's rarity and fact they refuse on making more for the U.S. market. Lets not mention the Final Mix series that's FINALLY going across the ocean after practically a decade of being at Japan only.

There are probably some games that won't make it, but there are U.S. based games that don't make it in the U.S., there are U.S. based games that don't make it in Japan, it's just common sense. It's not prejudice, but it's also not because the market DOESN'T want the games produced here overseas.