The one thing that was a bit sad was how many people predicted the release of a Japanese version "very soon!" I actually had the chance to speak to someone from Blizzard's international division at the very first Blizzcon in LA. As someone studying Japanese, I thought it might be fun to have a Japanese language version of the game (as my Spore is in Japanese... sometimes it's cool and othertimes it's just frustrating.) I asked if a Japanese version was in the pipe. Unfortunately it seems Blizzard feels that a Japanese version isn't worth the effort. The game market in Japan is too heavily lopsided toward consoles, so going through the trouble of doing a translation wouldn't pay off in the end. Sorry Japan, looks like you'll have to be happy with looking up the quest goals online!
Saturday, September 27, 2008
WoW Reviews on Amazon... Japan!
I was just skimming through the customer reviews for World of Warcraft on Amazon Japan. The majority of them are favorable, and it seems there's even a website somewhere that will give players a rough translation of the quest goals. The one thing that made me chuckle was the frequency with which reviews referred to the character design being "too American." Some say they can't build characters they like because of this. Others say that, while it may turn some off, personally they don't mind so much.
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3 comments:
That's interesting. They did change the models for china...but the only change they made was make the undead's bones not show, because that's offensive or something along those lines. So Korea and China seem to not mind enough to buy it up in droves.
Korea and China have lots of gaming cafes, and console ownership is low.
I can see how localizing Spore for Japan would have been easy. Spore is full of nonsensical made-up words for things, just like Japanese.
another thing that makes it interesting that they don't identify with the characters; in anime no one looks Japanese. I just watched Gundam 00 and there are Japanese, European, and Turkish guys all on the same team, and they all look the same!
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