Pokemon As a Japan-Only Series

Started by Pinkie-Dawn December 3rd, 2014 11:38 AM
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Pinkie-Dawn

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So I have thought of this scenario for a while, but what if Pokemon became a Japan-only franchise after RSE? The Gen 3 games were the worst-selling games in the series when the fad in the U.S. died down, but the fad in Japan is still kicking, so considering that fads that die in the U.S. stay dead, Game Freak would decide that future Pokemon games will only be exclusive to Japan. On the bright side, the gen wars wouldn't be as terrible as it is now in the U.S. fanbase. What would you think if Pokemon became Japan-only in response to its decreasing popularity outside of Japan in the early 2000's? Do you find it ridiculous about how fads dictate what's in and what's not, thus hindering a series' reputation?

Oryx

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X and Y have sold 13.29 million, while Ruby and Sapphire sold 15.85 million and have been around far longer. Black and White sold 15.42 million. Pokemon is far from dead.

I think older people tend to be super self-centered about it - "Pokemon is dead! None of my friends play it!" But Pokemon isn't for you. It's for kids around 10 years old. Just because your friends are nostalgic about the GBC generation doesn't mean that it's decreasing in popularity in any meaningful way. There are still plenty of fans, more than enough to justify worldwide release.


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Pinkie-Dawn

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X and Y have sold 13.29 million, while Ruby and Sapphire sold 15.85 million and have been around far longer. Black and White sold 15.42 million. Pokemon is far from dead.
I meant RSE were the worst-selling titles of the series at the time. Pokemon XY is still new, so give it more time unless nothing changes to its overall sales.

There are still plenty of fans, more than enough to justify worldwide release.
Tell that to the Mother fans begging for Mother 3 to imported.

Satoshi Ookami

Memento Mori

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If Pokemon became Japan-only, people would just import Japanese DSs and games.
It's not like Pokemon games have complex lines.
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Brendino

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Even if R/S/E were considered to do poorly compared to the other releases, it would have been a huge mistake to de-internationalize the franchise, since there's so much more to it than the games. I think that if they had decided to make Diamond and Pearl as Japan exclusives, it wouldn't take long for them to realize they made the wrong choice, as there'd be much public outcry, especially with the age of social media just dawning back then. All in all, we probably would've gotten HG/SS and Platinum released overseas anyway, but we may have just had to wait a little bit longer for them.

Altairis

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I don't think that they would have tried to release DPPt in Japan only, even if RSE were the worst selling games in the series. After RSE, we got access to Wi-Fi in games and the ability to trade with anyone in the world that has a 3DS. Because of this factor alone, I really think it's pointless that Gamefreak would only release DPPt in Japan. Maybe if DPPt sales had been horrid, they would have brought it to Japan, but again, there are always ways to try and bring in new gamers, see: BW and its "fresh, new experience."

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Nah

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Despite being the "worst selling games in the series", they still did pretty damn well. Almost 16 million copies worldwide is nothing to scoff at, and were even the best selling GBA games of 2002/2003. Lotta companies wish that their worst-selling games could do even half as well as that.

I don't think that Pokemon's overall popularity has really waned over the years, it's more that it's easier to hear more people ***** about it these days. Internet wasn't really a common household thing until after Gen II.

But it'd be a little sad to have seen Pokemon become a Japan-only thing. It's always a little sad when good series are exclusive to a particular country/region. And being swayed too much by fads is a short-sighted business practice, if you ask me. The customer isn't always right.
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As mentioned, once Pokemon took off in the west, it was never likely to go away. Although sales may have declined from the peak of 'Pokemania' if you will, there's still plenty of money to be made. Pokemon games are localised to Korea after all where it only sells in the tens of thousands, so the idea that Pokemon wouldn't be localised to English and sold in the States to millions of customers is a bit of a stretch.

But what if I'm not mistaken, initially Nintendo were not keen on bringing Pokemon to the West as there was a bizarre notion that 'Westerners don't like RPGs' and that the franchise was too cutesy for Western audiences. I guess it was the same company that put angry eyebrows on Kirby, so anything is possible. It always fascinates me to see the timeline of how things were released in the early days of Pokemon. If I'm not mistaken, Japan had Red and Green roughly 2 years before Red and Blue came out in the States (1996 to 1998), and by the time we had Red and Blue Japan already had Yellow and Pokemon cards, whereas those things took another years or so to filter through to us, by which time they had Gold and Silver. Thank goodness for World Wide release dates now.
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Pokemon is far too successful of a franchise to simply become Japan-only after a certain point. It's fandom is already probably the largest of any video game franchise on the internet next to Mario, Zelda, and Sonic, and it's so well known that it's not likely going anywhere and nothing will stop it from coming out of Japan.

If it DID become Japan-only, which won't likely happen, we will likely see fan-translations of the games in countless other languages like the Mother 3 translation was.

The fad may have died down in the US, but only in the mainstream media. Look at the internet, you see Pokemon everywhere on places like Youtube, Tumblr, DeviantArt, and forums like this, even if the mainstream media in the US now ignores it. Heck, it's starting to die down in Japan in more recent years because of the rise of a new franchise called "Yokai Watch" which still hasn't made it's way out of Japan even now. Just because it's died off in mainstream media (with most mainstream media only parodying Gen 1) doesn't mean it's gone for good, since the Pokemon fandom is probably one of the largest and most dedicated fandoms on the internet.