User blog:Seieireppa/Why God Eater 2 Rage Burst and God Eater Resurrection will NEVER BE LOCALIZED, so all of you can STOP BEGGING

Every day or so, at least once, often more, I’ll see someone, usually an unregistered user, speculate about a western localization of Rage Burst or Resurrection, or give some reason or another why we “deserve” a localization or why it’s “necessary” or “should happen.”

And while I’ve no problem with optimism, blind optimism in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is pointless and frankly has gotten old at this point…  First, though, a story.

When renowned visual novel author Kōtarō Uchikoshi wrote 999: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors (for the DS), he wasn’t counting on a sequel. He had no plans to expand 999 into what would become known as the Zero Escape franchise, but OVERWHELMING positive fan response convinced him to change his mind. And you know the best part? The VAST MAJORITY of that fan response was from the west. Out of the game’s 350k total sales, 300k—or 86.4%—of those sales came from North America. Because of that alone, Uchikoshi was convinced that the fans wanted a sequel, and thus Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward was born. And, AGAIN, an overwhelming WESTERN fan response convinced Uchikoshi to create Zero Escape 3 (revealed at Anime Expo 2015).

Similarly, the Danganronpa games were localized by NISA in the west because of the ENORMOUS western fanbase of the Japanese games. A hugely popular text-and-pictures LP (Let’s Play) and an already-existing fan translation patch of both DR games showed NISA that fans would want a proper localization—and they did. The Vita releases of Danganronpa, separated into two games in the west, sold a combined 410k copies. Out of those, approximately 40% of those sales came from North America.

Now, let’s look at a less fortunate example:  Valkyria Chronicles II. I’m sure some of you have seen me cite this game’s poor sales as the reason we never got VCIII over here—and you’d be right, as would I. 520k units were sold worldwide, but North America and Europe’s sales combined totaled less than 50% of that. North America represents a mere 20% of worldwide sales—110k units—of VCII.

Now, let’s get into some more detailed numbers. In the US, in the first ten weeks—from the week ending September 4th, 2010, to the week ending November 6th, 2010, only 48k units were sold. However, that’s still almost half of the US’ ENTIRE sales numbers. 19k of those sales came from the first week alone. 2010, in total, saw 62.5k units sold. In 2011, that number dropped to just shy of 15k, or a SEVENTY-SIX PERCENT DROP IN SALES. The year after that, sales dropped by a FURTHER fifty-five percent. And then, when VCIII gained traction in the west and western fans begged for a localization, do you know what happened? Sega looked at western sales numbers of VCII and saw a very clear conclusion: in all likelihood, western Valkyria Chronicles fans would not be likely to buy enough copies of VCIII to justify a localization. This is key; localization of a game costs lots of money, and companies NEED TO SELL A MINIMUM AMOUNT OF UNITS TO BREAK EVEN. This did not happen, or at most BARELY happened, with VCII. It would be tantamount to suicide for Sega to attempt a VCIII localization based on this information.

But I digress. Let’s take a look at why I wrote this and why all of you are delusional. Let’s look at sales numbers of Gods Eater Burst.

Worldwide, as of June 10th, 2015, 660k units were sold. Seems pretty nice, right? Except for the fact that 620k of those sales came from Japan. That’s just shy of 95% of total sales. A mere 30k, or 4.7%, of worldwide sales came from the US. Now, let’s take a closer look at those numbers. In the first week of sales—from March 12th to March 19th, 2011—only 4,146 units were sold. That’s almost 1/6 of total sales, in the FIRST WEEK ALONE. After that, in the second week, 3,178 units were sold, for a 23.3% drop in sales, bringing the total to 9,065 units sold. In the third week, 1,741 units were sold, for a 45.2% drop in sales from the second week, bringing the total units sold to a measly 10,317. I’ll skip the in-between stuff, but for the tenth week of sales—from May 14th to May 21st—only 786 units were sold. The total for 2011 was 28,472 units sold. It didn’t help that both GEB and VCII were PSP games released over here towards the very end of the PSP’s lifespan in the west. In Japan, on the other hand, the PSP lasted until 2013 or so, remaining far more relevant for far longer. The Vita has only recently begun to supersede it in Japan, and it’s essentially become the PSP 2.0, with the same kind of games published and marketed to the same demographics as was the PSP.

And that brings me to the REAL reason I made this post:  God Eater 2 (and by extension, Rage Burst) and God Eater Resurrection.

Here in the west, the Vita has sold consistently at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to total sales. In Japan, it is among the highest-selling consoles, losing out mainly to the PS4 and various 3DS models. The Vita is an INCREDIBLY popular system in Japan—as I have said earlier, it has superseded the PSP and has become essentially the PSP 2.0 in terms of games available and demographics marketed to. God Eater 2 was released on the PSP and Vita, of course, but by the time Rage Burst came around, the PSP had finally dropped out of relevance, prompting a dual release on PS4 and Vita.

Keep in mind, of course, that the Vita is a failing system in the west. The vast majority of things released on it anymore are niche JRPGs and other, similarly niche titles by dedicated developers who have BEEN releasing on the Vita since early in the Vita’s lifespan. Combining this with GEB’s sales numbers in the west, and even someone with no grasp of market principles and notions of supply and demand could see that a western release of GE2 or Rage Burst would tank so badly that they would make sales numbers of the home video release of any given Mega Shark movie look generous.

And remember what I said about the cost of localization? Many factors go into localization, and each of these cost money. Translation, asset editing, insertion of translated text into the game, marketing, voice acting (consider Bamco; they dub almost ALL their games.  The only one I can think of off the top of my head that was left un-dubbed was Tales of Hearts R), and ALL OF THESE COST MONEY. Because of this, a minimum amount of sales would be necessary for them to break even, and if they can’t even PROJECT those numbers, then there’s no point in even trying.

“But Matt,” you say, “couldn’t they localize Resurrection because it’s a remake of Burst, which was already released here?”

To that, I say only “see paragraph 8.”

I rest my case, and I hope to see none of you begging for a goddamn localization now.