DQ8 already has an english localization. DQ7 was remade and would've needed a new one. That's a huge difference and it's the main one that tends to be the deciding factor, especially with such a text-heavy game.

To release this in the west, all they have to do is go back to their english script and just copy it into the new game and then probably get at least half a million sales out of it. They'd be absolutely insane not to do it! Whereas with DQ7, it's a huge game with lots of translation to do. It's also a lesser known game in the west. That's a much bigger gamble for them. DQ8 is no gamble at all, it's guaranteed profit.

To be honest, they could end the 3DS today and it'd still have enough awesome games to last another few years. There're also a ton of DS games I haven't got round to.

As for up and coming games. Fire Emblem is the main one. Then I'll be waiting for localization announcements for Bravely Second, Final Fantasy Explorers and the recently announced Dragon Quest 8. Especially Dragon Quest, I never played that and have repeatedly read it's the best in the series. Hope they add C-stick camera controls.

You are exactly what they are talking about. Youve played less than half the series, and think you know the latest one is the 'best'. A very rare opinion in the elder scrolls circles by the way. Very, very, very, little has changed in elderscrolls over the decades, beyond the graphics. Its simply gotten smaller, and smaller, and smaller, with less, and less, and less in it. A magic gimmick and 'shouts' dont do much to offput that.
 

I'm not who he's talking about at all because I wouldn't consider myself anything close to being a hardcore Elder Scrolls fan. I agree that if people call themselves hardcore fans, it's a bit silly to have an opinion without having played all the games. 

The only reason I'm comfortable saying that after only having played 3/5 of the series is because I've listened to a lot of people who are into the series and almost never have I heard anyone say Arena or Daggerfall are the best. It seems to usually be Morrowind.

But my larger complaint is that I don't think this narrative he's stitched together actually describes reality (a pretty typical indicator is when someone has to base their theory on a personal anecdote rather than on some data we can check). It might roughly describe how the business side tries to operate but it doesn't describe people's opinions. If you to any of the fanbases for the long running game series, you almost never find that people just all love the latest game the most. The Final Fantasy fanbases usually like 6 or 7 the most. The Zelda fanbases usually like A Link to the Past or Ocarina the most. The Mario fanbases usually like Super Mario World or Mario 64 the most. What he's called a "normative force" absolutely exists. 

English translation for the new DQ7 out as well. Many times companies like this pay to use fan translations. Xseed almost entirely uses them for Falcom games. DQ8 also sold rather poorly..only half a mill in the US and that was only because it included a demo of FF12.DQ7 didn't sell great either but it was released late.  That said they sell on DS but then again this is the same company who hyped people up at a conference to announce a port of a port of a port and so far yet to release it over a year later.

Where is the english translation for DQ7?

I wasn't just basing that on speculation, they did admit that was the reason: http://www.siliconer...rect=no&oswrr=1

I think they were saying that the full world of FF7, if remade with the detail of FF13 would take ten times as long (which I suspect was hyperbolic). That's not necessarily the same as saying the version they would remake would take that long. If they ever did remake it, chances are the world wouldn't have that same amount of detail. Almost no "open world" games do. A remake of FF7 would probably be about the same size a project as FF15 I would guess. But would probably take less time cos they'd already know what they were making, instead of all the dilly-dallying they've had with 15.

And where exactly did they say that Kingdom Hearts and FF15 will run on anything with DX11. That would be an insane thing to claim.

Well of course it COULD do it with optimization. Almost anything could. But how much? It has 1/4 the RAM for a start. It's unlikely they're designing the game to just leave most of that unused. You'd need to know exactly how they're putting the resources to use to know how easy it would be to port to the Wii U. That makes a huge difference. If they're using most of that memory for high-res textures, well it's simple enough to just scale those down in a few clicks. What if they're using all of that for rendering really high poly models en masse? Well then they'd have to go through all of those models and make alternatives at 1/4 the poly count. That's a lot more work than downsizing a texture.

Recall, it took Ubisoft about 6 months longer to release Watch Dogs on Wii U, and it still came out as a bad port. That was even designed for last gen consoles. Do you think they're all just really crap at their jobs or do you think maybe it's just quite hard to do?

Right, but there's a difference between supporting the same (or a similar) graphics library and having the same graphical power. The Wii U could have the identical architecture and hardware functions as the PS4 but if the game's being written mainly for the PS4, the Wii U wouldn't be able to handle it in terms of the CPU and GPU power. Which means they'd need to do the whole graphical downgrade thing to get it working on the Wii U. Which I'm guessing puts them off! It sounds like they're having enough trouble trying to get the Xbox to keep up as it is.

Lol did you write that article on gamasutra? Or can I be rude about it?

I started the Elder Scrolls at Morrowind and I still think Skyrim's the best in the series.

When did you specify this was about western games? He doesn't say that anywhere in his article. That's what I was responding to!

But either way, I accepted that it's a fairly accurate description of the business side of things. Jim Sterling pointed out in a recent video how many times Peter Molyneux had said that his previous game was crap just before his newest came out. The part I was criticising was this as a description of gamer's attitudes. When it comes to actual attitudes, it doesn't seem particularly relevant where the games are coming from (unless you're suggesting people systematically have different attitudes depending on the game's origin). I'm fairly sure you can point to the exact same phenomena with western games. I could link to any number of articles or videos that argue how much worse FPSs have got in the last decade (more or less the analogous argument you hear about JRPGs) and those are some of the most heavily hyped games in existence. Total Biscuit did a good one 

I just don't buy the idea that if people don't know everything about past games, they're defenseless idiots ripe for controlling by marketing departments. I think your knowledge of the past is largely orthogonal to such gullibility.

The souls games really werent that difficult. 

Ha! Speak for yourself. Some bosses took me about 20 attempts.

Mmmm I could never get into Monster Hunter I'm afraid. It just didn't reel me in like Dark Souls. I may have to try this Kings Field though. It's on the PS1 right? Does it look hideous if you play it now then?

Speaking of the devil. Gamesradar recently redid their top 100 games of all time. Guess what came in top? Quite a shock actually: http://www.gamesrada...est-games-ever/

Dude, people play dark souls blind folded, its not that hard, in fact, its gotten EASIER since the name change to the soul series. You want some seriously tough as nails souls action? Play some Kings field, instead of babys first field game. Monster hunter is considerably more challenging than dark souls, so is playing for platinum ratings in platinum games. Dark souls is simple, and predictable, pattern recognition with actual punishment for failure.

The reason people think its so hard, is because its gaining mainstream recognition, and unlike all the other mainstream games, its challenge isnt fake, its not a dramatic depiction of faux challenge, and they have been conditioned to associate these dramatic depictions of the challenge in these cutscenes and quick time events that their character faces, with actual challenge, even though the the actual challenge was removed. This is why, when faced with ACTUAL challenge, and they FAIL, they quickly claim the game is broken.

You want to talk about psychology, try looking up some pavlov, to see how incredibly conditioned the worst generation is.

You say it's pattern recognition as if there's some other way to make difficult boss fights. What other options are there? Every boss in every videogame as far as I can tell is about pattern recognition.

Unless someone writes an incredibly smart AI that can learn and create new moves as it goes, a developer is only going to be able to create so many different attacks. And to save the boss behaving incredibly weirdly, those attacks are probably going to be selected by some deterministic algorithm. Ergo pattern recognition!

It's absolutely worth getting. You can find them fairly cheap if you hunt around and there're enough good exclusives to justify buying one.

I'm guessing Xenoblade Chronicles X and Zelda will probably be the only 2 AAA games left though. Just a hunch. (no, I'm not counting Star Fox as AAA)

They need to give us something to actually analyze!

With both Xenoblade X and Zelda still coming, yeah it's definitely worth the purchase at this point. It'd be nice if we get a few more AAA games announced. But if not, plenty to keep busy with for sure. The quality of games on the console has been incredibly good imo. Much better than the Wii in general.

Yeah the comparison with NSMB is pretty fair.

And I'm fine with that. I'll probably always buy that series as long as they leave about 4 year gaps between entries. The problem with series like COD and AC is they're every year. So the fact that they're all so similar is incredibly obvious. I do own BLOPS2 on Wii U though. 

I'll have to give it a go I guess to see how it plays out. Even watching videos, it's a bit hard to grasp the pacing.

Part of it will just come down to how quick you are as a player.I felt that the fact that you can't necessarily see what the enemy is doing is an interesting design approach, but makes the experience feel less fluid. Felt like a lot of starting and stopping.

I've never played a turn based strategy game before, but the demo sold me on it. As a side note, I hope Nintendo restocks all the FE amiibo so the amiibo functionality doesn't go unused by most.

If you've never played a turn based strategy game before, hurry up and play Fire Emblem Awakening (assuming you weren't placing that in a different genre). It's a lot better than this.

Not trial and error. Replaying chapters. If you just look around you can keep track of enemy placements and know where to hide. It's a challenge.

I assume it's mostly replaying chapter because you start off with few characters though right?

 The gameplay seems fast paced enough and I think I will have fun using the FE amiibo too. 

From my demo playthrough, that seemed to be exactly what the gameplay wasn't. Much more slow and methodical than Fire Emblem, which seems to be the obvious comparison for turn based strategy.

Yeah but pretty much everyone who buys all these games on sale never play them so they are wasting money.

Sssshhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone. You'll make the entire industry crash if people start to realise it.

 Does it really? either way I couldnt watch that we need like an english sub version. Either way this was and still is my most anticipated game of the year

Lol I said that before I watched the trailer actually. I think it actually looks about the same as it did originally. It just looks weird to be honest.

OK so it does look considerably better than the earliest material. I'm looking forward to the explanation for carboard box man.