I SUSPECT racism might play a role in this even if most people don't want to go there. To the Japanese audience a game being released to the US Audience in some ways cheapens it. "Japan Exclusive" especially on games that Westerners/Americans want can be a big deal.
Companies have however been focusing increasingly on getting their products to the US where there is a bigger market in absolute terms, and I suspect this might be hurting Japanese sales as a substantial number of Japanese gamers refuse to support products seeing release outside of the US.
I look back to the atmosphere surrounding Final Fantasy X and it's "International" version along with what happened with the "Final Mission" installment that wrapped up the story as one apparent example of the power of "Japanese Exclusives" (and I read some disturbing things from translated periodicals).
A sign of this problem could also be seen in things like the game "Cross Edge Dash" which is a sequel/expanded version of CRoss Edge (not sure of all the details). But apparently the American branch of the companys were surprised it was going Japan only, and the company feels that a Japan only release will actually help sales (ie I'd imagne that given the 'niche' audience in the US it's less profirtable to tap that despite the demand, than it is to sell more copies to a more mainstream audience in Japan which will embrace it as a Japanse-Only release).
Such are my thoughts.
As far as Japan's declining Birthrate, it amazes me when people tend to see things like that in a negative light. All I can say is "gogo Japan" more countries need to see exactly that. Right now the earth is dealing with overpopulation and we need less people. We saw it coming generations ago but didn't embrace "Zero Population Growth" when we had a chance. Heck after World War II would have been an ideal time to start exercising some control over breeding, but instead we saw a Baby Boom.
Whether the Wii is responsible or not (jokes aside) whatever they are doing is working and we here in the US should serious start thinking about reducing our own population as well.
Of course then again I'm a war monger, not just over Nationalistic/long-term principles but simply because I feel that anything that gets rid of massive numbers of people is a good thing. When your dealing with all of the livable areas being overpopulated like they are (expanding into all those desert regions people look at to counter this arguement is impractical, as is the building of undersea habitats and such... think about it, who
would want to live there compared to the other regions?) anything getting rid of massive numbers of people is good.
One of the reasons why I find the aversion to killing Civilians so ridiculous not only is it impractical (you need to break the people to break a culture and actually achieve anything, modern mentality leading to a lot of 'do nothing' wars), but also killing the people helps humanity as a whole by freeing up/reducing the overcrowding in livable areas.
You fly a bomber over a crowded city for example and wipe out 20,000 cheering civilians to kill one leader giving a speech. That's 20,000 less people crowded into that area, 20,000 more jobs opening up (leading to less poverty and unemployment which is everywhere) and
other things. Oh sure, it blows chips to be one of those 20,000 (nobody wants to be culled) but War is as impartial a way of doing it as any other, and tends to be fairly darwinistic (the strongest/most capable humans and the strongest societies tend to survive).
I'm getting way off topic though, it's just the joke reminded me of it. Peaceful methods are of course better, but I don't think even declining birth rates in some places can stabilize the population to living space/resources ratio fast enough to matter.
>>>----Therumancer--->
