Topic: Vampire Killer Coming to Wii U in Japan

[Reinhart77]

This article says there isn't much of a chance of it coming to North America because there's no MSX games available on the Virtual Console, but it'll be in Japan in about a few days.  I'll still hold out some hope that we might see it some day. 

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/12/11/castlevania-precursor-vampire-killer-coming-to-wii-u-virtual-con/

[darkmanx_429]

sigh...

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Goddamnit...
I want ALL the CV's on my Wii in some sort of way, damnitall.

[Belmontoya]

Lucky me to have an Ouya...

I've got everything on it, even all the gameboy games. And the best part... It was all free!

Had this thing and sold it, then bought it again to give it a second chance. I'm damn glad that I did. Ouya still gets more play than the PS4 at my house.

:-P

[PFG9000]

I'm still tempted to get an Ouya...

Is there a way on WiiU to enter your region settings as Japan and download games from that region?  That somehow works with PSN games, I believe.

[Shiroi Koumori]

Maybe they will bring it overseas. Wait a few months.

[Belmontoya]

I'm really wanting a wii u for that new Zelda!

But yeah, considering that you can get Ouya for $75.. It's worth that for bomb squad alone. There are tons of great games on top of the emulators. And they update frequently.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

^LOL well I could play anything on my PC or Tablet as well.  But I want everything on Wii-U 'cuz it's my PartyBox.

Sorry PFG... the Wii-U is still Region-Locked, so it'd need to be imported.  PS3 is somewhat-regionfree because it's account-based, so if you make a new account and tell it you're somewhere else, it'll download from that region even if the physical system is not there.
One of the things I hate about the latest Nintendo systems is their stupidity with RegionLocking.  The NintendoDS was region-free, but the Nintendo3DS isn't.  The Wii was region-locked as is the Wii-U.  So irritating...

[Belmontoya]

I know what you mean Jorge. But that's what's awesome about ouya. It's a living room party box. It's not like playing on a tablet or PC.

With 4 controls and games like bomb squad and toto temple, and duck game it's what we always gravitate to when friends show up. Then we get our retro party on and it's awesome getting any game we want for free at the drop of a hat.

It's totally worth the $75 considering that's not much
more than you pay for a single game these days.

[uzo]

I think digital distribution may have had something to do with region locking. I believe while the DS and DSlite were region free, the DSi was NOT. The only difference? DSi had a digital distribution platform "DSi Ware". Similarly the Wii also had one, and was region locked. I'm not exactly sure why it would matter, but it seems to. Though the PS3 and PS4 are both region free and have digital distribution.

It may come down to some wonky legal issue too. I know that something in the contract for the English voice acting in Megaman Legends 1, 2, and Tron Bonne is preventing them from being released digitally. They have come out as re-releases in Japan, but Capcom cites contract issues for them not showing up stateside.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I have heard that region-locking happens mostly due to the massive currency market in Europe, and because of issue with different countries and languages and prices for each, Nintendo has opted to keep the markets separated.

So basically, in order to prevent the European Market from just 'importing' the NTSC USA version, while they wait for the EUR version of a game to come out, since that is going to be money for retailers in Europe... but it's often either delayed or just outright never released.

I get it... but I still disagree, hehe.

[uzo]

Oh yes. The original reason it was incepted was to prevent market demand from wildly spiking and to protect copyrights and trademarks.

1) Supply & Demand: If you make 10,000 units to sell in Japan because you expect the demand is for that amount, you don't want the USA buying 4,000 units out of that stock. Now you can't tell if demand in Japan is higher than your initial estimation, or if the overseas demand is there. So when what? Make more for Japan? Invest in overseas? Either of them may result in a huge loss when you make more units and then fail to sell them. It muddies things to say the least.

2) Regional Investment: Not every company can pay for a world wide release. Consider that say you have 10k units in Japan, 100k units in the USA, and 60k units for Europe territories. If you can't afford to make that 190k unit stock, you need to do them in steps. By that I mean make and sell the 10k Japan copies, get your money from that and use it to pay for the USA 100k copies, etc, etc as you get through all of your regional supplies.

3) Copyrights & Trademarks. Usually you want to get your legal stuff set before you deploy in a region. Different countries have different rules and processes, that take different amounts of time to complete, for registering trademarks, patents, etc. You really want to be sure you're safe on those before going ahead and deploying in those regions. There is a LOT more detail in this, and is a little subjective and case by case, but that's the basic overview.

4) Contracts and Legal Stipulations: Contracts, either for development, distribution, assets, marketing, etc, can have weird conditions and be region specific or prevent out of region sales by any number of parties involved in the product. These are most always very situational and case by case. Not much I can detail about it.

5) ESRB / Ratings: The sale of products in a country not rated by the government of that country can come with heavy penalties and legal trouble. The process in which they are rated are very case by case, and depending on the content of the game can take a very long time. Usually it is hard to coordinate this, and other similar processes, for release of a game world wide at the same time. More to the point, retailers usually are required to have ratings on games which really is the big block on this. They will NOT sell games without a rating.

[Dracula9]

And thus the ever-knowledgeable Reverend came to the aid of the boards once again.

[Gunlord]

Oh yes. The original reason it was incepted was to prevent market demand from wildly spiking and to protect copyrights and trademarks.

1) Supply & Demand: If you make 10,000 units to sell in Japan because you expect the demand is for that amount, you don't want the USA buying 4,000 units out of that stock. Now you can't tell if demand in Japan is higher than your initial estimation, or if the overseas demand is there. So when what? Make more for Japan? Invest in overseas? Either of them may result in a huge loss when you make more units and then fail to sell them. It muddies things to say the least.

2) Regional Investment: Not every company can pay for a world wide release. Consider that say you have 10k units in Japan, 100k units in the USA, and 60k units for Europe territories. If you can't afford to make that 190k unit stock, you need to do them in steps. By that I mean make and sell the 10k Japan copies, get your money from that and use it to pay for the USA 100k copies, etc, etc as you get through all of your regional supplies.

3) Copyrights & Trademarks. Usually you want to get your legal stuff set before you deploy in a region. Different countries have different rules and processes, that take different amounts of time to complete, for registering trademarks, patents, etc. You really want to be sure you're safe on those before going ahead and deploying in those regions. There is a LOT more detail in this, and is a little subjective and case by case, but that's the basic overview.

4) Contracts and Legal Stipulations: Contracts, either for development, distribution, assets, marketing, etc, can have weird conditions and be region specific or prevent out of region sales by any number of parties involved in the product. These are most always very situational and case by case. Not much I can detail about it.

5) ESRB / Ratings: The sale of products in a country not rated by the government of that country can come with heavy penalties and legal trouble. The process in which they are rated are very case by case, and depending on the content of the game can take a very long time. Usually it is hard to coordinate this, and other similar processes, for release of a game world wide at the same time. More to the point, retailers usually are required to have ratings on games which really is the big block on this. They will NOT sell games without a rating.

Man, that's really interesting, Uzo. I always hated region locking, but now I suppose I see the rationale for it due to copyright stuff...that said, in today's era, with digital downloads so common, I would imagine the supply and demand/regional investment rationales aren't as important as they used to be, since anyone with an Internet connection would be able to download your game off Steam or wherever without you paying the costs of making cartridges/CDs/etc. The copyright thing still holds true, unfortunately--heck, IIRC, they managed to release the Jojo PS3 game here but had to change a lot of character names to avoid copyright trouble in the U.S.

[uzo]

Retail is still a BIG part of the business. For console titles it's almost crucial for most developers. A box on a shelf of GameStop is still, in almost all cases, worth more than any digital service at this point. That gap is of course closing, and rapidly, but the edge retail has is still pretty large.

You can see a lot of these factors I mentioned above in action even today. Take the new Super Smash Bros. for example.

Super Smash Bros. for WiiU release dates:
NA November 21, 2014
EU November 28, 2014
AUS November 29, 2014
JP December 6, 2014

They're close, but all of them are different. On the very basic level they likely pushed production as soon as the legal got cleared in a rush for Christmas, thus you have different release dates for the same game in other regions. It's also important to note that the US market would have had a much higher sock produced, and so you have to imagine their legal was tied up before the others as well. From my experience you usually want to produce the disks at least 3 months in advance for a large scale US release.

There's a lot of factors that go into it, and it is so very case by case. You can take these as a sort of guideline, but not 'the end all' for production of a game.