The story behind its NA release is pretty interesting.
Originally it was announced for NA as Monado: Beginning of the World. It didn't get much of a spotlight in E3 and there was no news of it for NA when it did release in Japan. When it was released it got renamed as Xenoblade. Then Nintendo of Europe announced it was being localized under the name Xenoblade Chronicles. At the time you'd think the NA release would be announced on E3. Instead for 2011 Wii fans only had Kirby and Zelda to look forward to as single player games. It should be noted that the Wii had very little if not no JRPGs in its library. Console JRPGs were also in a bit of a slump during that generation of game consoles.
When faced with the fact that there was no news of it for NA, along with the Wiis empty 2011 lineup, Operation Rainfall was started. It was a massive campaign to bring the game along with two other JRPGs over. The other games being Pandora's Tower and the Last Story. It included sending letters to Nintendo, and making the initial listing for Monado: Beginning of the World the top preoorder for Amazon. It was so big that Amazon acknowledged it directly. Nintendo of America of course gave an announcement of an announcement. Latter announcement of course being disappointing. Funnily enough it turned out Xenoblade was supposed to be shown at E3 2011 but NoA prevented it.
What followed was a lot of backlash. I don't really have any links for this. I was however a elementary school kid with no life who only owned a Wii and a DSi that frequented gamefaqs a lot. Suffice to say my and especially gamefaqs' jimmies were rustled. I imagine the broader gaming community also hated it because there was straight up an article on engadget on how to hack your Wii to play it.
Thankfully NoA saw sense and decided to release it in NA. Of course they lost sight of about half the sense they just saw because they made the damn game gamestop exclusive. The two other games were eventually released as well.
NoA had no faith in the game at all. From barely giving it spotlight to cancelling its localization, to making it a Gamestop exclusive. It's what makes the recent news of XC DE's success so satisfying. This game was born in a world of JRPG strife, and against the odds, its fans chose to fight!
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* This article was originally published here
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