Petitions like Operation Rainfall only benefited the company and got the game on the map, exposing great games to thousands of potential (and realized) buyers.
Reggie should have rephrased that message. Yes, there are other factors involved...
... but Xenoblade sold more than it did in Europe or Japan, despite Wii owners getting the game years later and basically towards the very end of the Wii's lifecycle when nearly everyone had abandoned it.
... Xenoblade being released earlier, and selling well, could have kept Wii momentum going and shown that great games can still sell on the humble system, rather than Nintendo themselves displaying a shocking lack of faith in such a great game.
... Xenoblade sold more than Europe and Japan, despite being only available directly from Nintendo or Gamestop. No Amazon, no Wal-mart, no Best Buy... and yet it SOLD OUT. Every last single new copy of the game is gone, with demand outstripping supply, and jacking up prices of used copies to nearly $100 due to Nintendo's unwillingness to do a second printing, indicating both their gross underestimation of the game's appeal, as well as their indifference at capitalizing on its success.
... Nintendo of America claim that the issue was the cost of "localizing" the game and the time and money it would need to do so... and yet all they did was use the localization of the European version, who actually spent the money and effort to translate and dub the game into English. All Nintendo of America did was change the region setting and print a few copies. They put in the absolute, most bare-bones effort into bringing the game to our shores, and they only did so after YEARS of waiting.
... The game still sold out despite die-hard JRPG fans importing the game from Europe, with even major websites like Destructoid and Kotaku giving players steps on how to mod your Wii just so you could play the game.
Xenoblade is easily one of the best JRPGs of all time, and easily one of the best Wii games in its library, and the fact Nintendo acted like it wasn't their responsibility and that an American audience didn't exist, when it eventually became a success (and might have been MORE of one had it had a wide release and a second printing so more people could buy it), just shows how... clueless... Nintendo is about their actual audience.
In fact, the Xenoblade successor on Wii U is the ONLY game that interests me for the system. Sorry Mario. Sorry Pikmin. Sorry Smash Bros. The follow-up to the game Nintendo almost couldn't be bothered to release in America is the game that would make me buy a system I'm not particularly interested in otherwise.
Seriously, Nintendo... you're a game company. You have ONE job. Release great games. If a great game fails, that's all on you, not the audience of the game that you failed to attract. Starving JRPG players proved that by making all three of those JRPGs you ignored successes once you actually put in the smallest modicum of effort to make them available.