Nintendo Europe's senior marketing director Laurent Fischer has blamed the Smash Brothers delay on the sheer amount of titles Nintendo is currently producing for Europe.
"You need to see it title by title," he told Official Nintendo Magazine. "It's the same team, the same pool of teams, that have been localising and that have been proofing.
"But localisation is only one thing: production is another thing also, because at the moment we are not just producing Smash Bros for Europe, we're producing hundreds of first party games and third party games for locations all over the world."
Fischer said that Nintendo also had to record six different sets of voices for some characters, which added to the time needed. Good going considering most of the characters in Nintendo games are unintelligible anyway.
"I realise that from time to time we have still been disappointing some people," Fischer added. "We know that we are still not reaching the expectations of all the people, but we're really doing our best to resolve this."
Since 99% of Europe speaks English anyway, why not give us the American version? And how about a global release date so we're not plagued by spoilers from our Japanese and American counterparts? Or how about dropping region locking so English speaking Europeans can buy the US version and aren't punished for everyone else?
I didn't think it was that complex an issue. 8 months for a few lines of dialogue that's already in English? It'd better come in about 150 languages to justify that delay, even counting the 1st party games.
And if you're going to exaggerate, at least make it believable. "Hundreds" of 1st party games? Please.
Theres no excuse for this, it smacks of poor planning, especially when both MS and Sony can do a much better job of worldwide (or nearer to worldwide) releases.
Since 99% of Europe speaks English anyway, why not give us the American version?
Try not to be an idiot. 99% speaking english, eh? You'd make people in every country other than the UK very p**sed off by doing that. How the hell would continental Europe feel about having a game not in their language. It's like, I speak a bit of French, but I bloody well wouldn't want my games in French.
Plus, that would involve changing all of the formats for the discs and stuff. So just, no.
I bought it imported in march and well.. its boring. one player lasted about 16 hours max and wifi crap. No online leaderboard or anything. Seems such a waste. Mario kart is miles better as the online has it completely right. Won't be re buying brawl when comes out.
I bought it imported in march and well.. its boring. one player lasted about 16 hours max and wifi crap. No online leaderboard or anything. Seems such a waste. Mario kart is miles better as the online has it completely right. Won't be re buying brawl when comes out.
Mightyjinjo, you're a pathetic troll. This topic shouldn't even spark that little stupid auto-rant fuse of yours, it's simply the discussion of the delay. I've seen other posts and you bitch about anything.
Oh, and of course, I disagree with everything you said. You need friends to have a good time with it. That's probably where you're lacking.
Since 99% of Europe speaks English anyway, why not give us the American version?
Try not to be an idiot. 99% speaking english, eh? You'd make people in every country other than the UK very p**sed off by doing that. How the hell would continental Europe feel about having a game not in their language. It's like, I speak a bit of French, but I bloody well wouldn't want my games in French.
Plus, that would involve changing all of the formats for the discs and stuff. So just, no.
For italian plumbers, they speak a pretty good English no? Mama mia!
To be honest I'd forgotten all about it. I even ordered two wavebirds and was going to import it. Then Games Focus on Goodge Street decided they were going to charge about £80 for it with the import disc-thingy and I went off the idea (they also tried to sell me a second hand copy of mario kart for about £50 when it was supposedly sold out elsewhere. Currys on Oxford St duely obliged a brand new copy for £35, so as much as it pains me, I won't be supporting the small retailer; I'll stick to Game).
Anyway, Nintendo will have lost a lot of postive press with this massive delay. My Wii hasn't been on apart from MK in the last month anyway.
i think i heard somewhere that other developers are aware that there are a lot of languages in europe and so plan the localisation in order for there to be a global launch. Has someone told Nintendo about this idea?!?!??
The best way to resolve this is to begin work on the translations for Europe earlier. Nintendo have European studios, so give them the game to translate. It's just shear laziness that has made the game become so delayed. Yes, they have to convert from NTSC to PAL but it sure as hell shouldn't eat into the games life cycle for 5 months.
Anyway, they'll have lost quite a few sales for this when it eventually does show up in stores. Quite a few people have imported with the Freeloader while others have just given up no the game totally. I certainly won't be buying it when it comes out but that's because I've imported.
Oh, and RumbleThunder, Mightyjinjo is right about the Wifi. It's not very good. Quite limited. Very laggy from what I've played so far but that may just be because I'm playing people in the US. But from what I'm hearing from Americans, they're even finding it laggy playing against each other.
As much as i love nintendo to do away with the whole Region lock its just not fair to others like france. @Dajmin Please don't act like a t**t. Most of Europe Speak their country's own language and theirfore would want to hear it in said language. Put it this way. If i gave you and a game that you really wanted but it was in japanese. you would be pished. You might think now "hell i'll just buy my own copy, but you can't because as it turns out That there is only japanese ones selling.
don't forget that it has a lot of game text and there is info on lots of things in it
There better be a butt load of trophies in the game .
That said, I simply cannot wait. They may have missed a trick with the online side of things, personally I was hoping for a dedicated Wii channel. What draws me is the insane amount of content, co-op modes, level designer and of course the untouchable local multiplayer .
Sony & MS manage Nintendo. This is no longer a valid excuse. & their games usualy have twice as much text & speech in than any of your games with the exception of Zelda. You're lazy thats all there is to it.
I can't believe people are so quick to bitch! I mean WiiWare launched yesterday, isn't that something to be happy about? It's made me forget all about SSBB. Although saying that, I wasn't really bothered about SSBB in the first place...
To everyone who has complained about my comments on Europe:
It's true enough. They are taught English from a very young age and most of them are fluent. If you want to include all 40 of the main European languages for everything in the world, it's impractical. The Eurostar has English and French instructions on signs and somehow people manage to read them. Must be witchcraft!
And where do you draw the line? Bagvalal? A month's delay for 2000 native speakers? Great use of time. You can't please everyone, and if I was fluent in another language I'd have no problem with the game being in that language.
Especially in a game like Brawl that isn't exactly going to rival Shakespeare for dialogue. An RPG? Sure, you want everyone to be able to follow the story. But it's hardly relevant in a game like this. And when you see how well a lot of Japanese translations go, it's hardly like anyone would be missing much.
Which leads me to another question - why don't they translate all of the text as they go? Surely it'd be faster to get a handful of people to copy each line into a couple of different languages rather than get them to do it bulk after completion?
Since the PS3 and 360 can manage simultaneous global releases, I think it is entirely unacceptable that Nintendo still drags it's feet when shipping to Europe. They always have. And being a Japanese company hasn't stopped Sony managing it.
That is all bulls**t. Why is one team doing the whole of Europe? Bulls**t. Six voices? Fair enough, but can't the original voice actor just record them when they were doing their own voices? It's not like you need to be able to speak fluent spanish to say "Go Charmander" or some such s**t.
I have already refused to buy this game. New at least. I will pick up a pre-owned copy - share my sale with someone else. No hurry.
As has been said, other companies manage. I think Microsoft in particular are very good at getting their games out. It's not really an excuse, so maybe it really is just an issue of poor management.
If language is the problem, then maybe they could release the English version (same as the NA version) in the UK and Ireland first, and then the continental localisation later on. Australia is treated as a PAL territory, but quite often receives releases before we do.
Sooo, George you got 6 months to translate these following lines from ntsc to PAL copies. (George looks at list) Toad."Oh no" Wario."Weh heh heh" Waluigi." Greh heh heh."
To everyone who has complained about my comments on Europe:
It's true enough. They are taught English from a very young age and most of them are fluent. If you want to include all 40 of the main European languages for everything in the world, it's impractical. The Eurostar has English and French instructions on signs and somehow people manage to read them. Must be witchcraft!
And where do you draw the line? Bagvalal? A month's delay for 2000 native speakers? Great use of time. You can't please everyone, and if I was fluent in another language I'd have no problem with the game being in that language.
Especially in a game like Brawl that isn't exactly going to rival Shakespeare for dialogue. An RPG? Sure, you want everyone to be able to follow the story. But it's hardly relevant in a game like this. And when you see how well a lot of Japanese translations go, it's hardly like anyone would be missing much.
Which leads me to another question - why don't they translate all of the text as they go? Surely it'd be faster to get a handful of people to copy each line into a couple of different languages rather than get them to do it bulk after completion?
Since the PS3 and 360 can manage simultaneous global releases, I think it is entirely unacceptable that Nintendo still drags it's feet when shipping to Europe. They always have. And being a Japanese company hasn't stopped Sony managing it.
I'm never going to agree with you here, but at least you've shown you put some thought into your point.
As for the global releases, Nintendo do sometimes manage them it must be said - I just think Brawl is such an important game that the team working on translations should've made it a priority.
That said I'm looking forward to having it to play after exams.
Ugh, being at boarding school I have friends from all over the world speaking just about every language known to man between them...
They play video games in ENGLISH! It's the best language to use, its rich, has lots of shortened easy words that when translated would require whole sentences, and it doesn't sound ridiculous!
They all think that the English voiceovers in any game are the best ones, and quite right.
And I do have a right to voice my opioion, I'm fluent in several languages and working on 2 more.
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