Professor Layton/Phoenix Wright Crossover for Japan Only, Says Capcom

[eightbitsprite]

idiots..... how hard is it to put basic English sub titling/text in it and just change the packaging for US/EU releases?

1. VERY. No matter how much you may beg or plead, translations will always be professional, should they be released by a company. It's just how they roll.

2A. When translating a language, a direct transliteration isn't going to evoke the same thought processes in the output language than the input; you can't put an entire game through a "translate me!" machine and voila, translated game! Otherwise there'd be no Engrish. Try taking a Japanese page for anything, put it through Google Chrome, and you'll see how "easy" it is to translate a language.

2B. To write a script for a character is very similar to writing a play- you must understand the character's goals, tactics, etc., etc., etc. If you just had one way of speaking for every character in a game, it'd make for boring dialogue and an ashamedly bad translation.

3. Also to take into account is the space the text has to convey the exact same message conveyed in Japanese. After all the trouble of translating and editing the script, it also must be squeezed into a text box. Multiple lines of text may need to be squeezed and cut to fit inside text boxes. Or the translators may have to expand the text box (in Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, the text box was expanded from 2 lines to 3, thus granting the translators more leniency). It's obviously overlooked, yet it's a factor all the same.
EXAMPLE: For fun, I decided to hack Fire Emblem: Fuin no Tsurugi's fan translation and make the script sound more natural, and this was the result [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1eEHYl_10s]. Despite SIX HOURS of editing, it's still riddled with errors. And Fire Emblem isn't even a text-heavy game, whereas Professor Layton/Phoenix Wright is.

4.A What needs to be taken into account, even before the game is decided to be translated at all, is determining by the rights owners if the game will sell at all. Let's be honest here: There's a bigger chance that the next Devil May Cry, Dead Rising, Mega Man (to be damn sure), and/or even Monster Hunter will sell better than a title for a brand-new handheld. It's a financial risk that Capcom might not be willing to take.

4B. In a collaboration/crossover title such as this, there's a matter of what royalties are paid to the respective IP owners. Jump Super Stars/Ultimate Stars' chance of release in the U.S. was killed due in part to all the different manga characters featured.

4C. If they have the greenlight to release it, a lot of money will go into making an instruction manual, publishing rights from Nintendo, and that doesn't even begin to describe the money going into marketing to make sure that the game being sold IS ACTUALLY KNOWN BY CONSUMERS.

4D. And find a good release date, too. Tales of Graces' sales sucked in Japan because some fucktard at Namco thought releasing their niche franchise RPG around the same time as Final Fantasy XIII was a good idea.



tl;dr- Video game translation's more than what you see it as. That was totally asinine, ZippyDSMlee.

Not really a few non critical titles even Mega man Transmission on the Cube were subtitled and not fully dub'd. Most fans will forgive engrish if at least its enough to play and enjoy the game, beyond that most common consumers wont care either way but you'll get enough random buys to make it worthwhile or at the very least pay off the subing.

It dose not have to be perfect even more so if the Japanese company looks at the problem like this you increase the budget on a game 10% but increase its sell potential 10 fold just by adding that magical English text option, now for text heavy games it may be a problem but thats where coming together and developing a system that can quickly process it(like anime dose these days) will come into play... but they have to find a lack of not making money from that a problem first..... ignoring being shot will not stop the bleeding damnit.....

Now other than that the my grammar was assenie but the thought is hardly, whats asinine is is the perfection complex in the industry it has to do this before we dub it it has to do that before we want to make money..... god...a few basic things will expand their market 10 fold accepting this is a single world and just adding English subs as a cost of business seems far to complicated for them... hell look how long it took them to figure out that getting subs on anime and getting it out to their partnered vendors makes them some money where they made none......

Now the reverse is not so true Japan is a small market whos more apt at English than other nations are apt at Japanese.

No. Most fans WOULDN'T. Not me, in any case, and I'm a fan of both franchises. First of all, the story is at the very least decent in the Layton series, and very strong in the Phoenix Wright series. One of the most important things writing a story is making sure the audience gets drawn into it, and the best way to completely kill immersion in a story is to make grammer mistakes with each sentence, which is what a translator is certain to do. You may argue that the dev team could then just go proofread everything, but that still won't make it quite work. Euphemisms, puns, and allusions to popular culture need to be changed to bridge the cultural gap. Haven't you ever wondered why Animal Crossing has such a huge translation team? For the reasons I just mentioned. In fact, they had to rework so many things to fit American culture that Nintendo retranslated the American game into Japanese and resold it.

Subtitles are fine, but they also require a bit of work. You have to write out the subs in a way that makes sense to the audience, and then you have to time them.

If I had a choice between a crappy fan translation for less money and a professional translation done well for more money, I would choose the professionally done one, unless the price is completely unreasonable. Also, if the only choice was an Engrish translation, I'd boycott the game until a decent translation comes out.

Need more proof?
The miracle never happen.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

idiots..... how hard is it to put basic English sub titling/text in it and just change the packaging for US/EU releases?

1. VERY. No matter how much you may beg or plead, translations will always be professional, should they be released by a company. It's just how they roll.

2A. When translating a language, a direct transliteration isn't going to evoke the same thought processes in the output language than the input; you can't put an entire game through a "translate me!" machine and voila, translated game! Otherwise there'd be no Engrish. Try taking a Japanese page for anything, put it through Google Chrome, and you'll see how "easy" it is to translate a language.

2B. To write a script for a character is very similar to writing a play- you must understand the character's goals, tactics, etc., etc., etc. If you just had one way of speaking for every character in a game, it'd make for boring dialogue and an ashamedly bad translation.

3. Also to take into account is the space the text has to convey the exact same message conveyed in Japanese. After all the trouble of translating and editing the script, it also must be squeezed into a text box. Multiple lines of text may need to be squeezed and cut to fit inside text boxes. Or the translators may have to expand the text box (in Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, the text box was expanded from 2 lines to 3, thus granting the translators more leniency). It's obviously overlooked, yet it's a factor all the same.
EXAMPLE: For fun, I decided to hack Fire Emblem: Fuin no Tsurugi's fan translation and make the script sound more natural, and this was the result [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1eEHYl_10s]. Despite SIX HOURS of editing, it's still riddled with errors. And Fire Emblem isn't even a text-heavy game, whereas Professor Layton/Phoenix Wright is.

4.A What needs to be taken into account, even before the game is decided to be translated at all, is determining by the rights owners if the game will sell at all. Let's be honest here: There's a bigger chance that the next Devil May Cry, Dead Rising, Mega Man (to be damn sure), and/or even Monster Hunter will sell better than a title for a brand-new handheld. It's a financial risk that Capcom might not be willing to take.

4B. In a collaboration/crossover title such as this, there's a matter of what royalties are paid to the respective IP owners. Jump Super Stars/Ultimate Stars' chance of release in the U.S. was killed due in part to all the different manga characters featured.

4C. If they have the greenlight to release it, a lot of money will go into making an instruction manual, publishing rights from Nintendo, and that doesn't even begin to describe the money going into marketing to make sure that the game being sold IS ACTUALLY KNOWN BY CONSUMERS.

4D. And find a good release date, too. Tales of Graces' sales sucked in Japan because some fucktard at Namco thought releasing their niche franchise RPG around the same time as Final Fantasy XIII was a good idea.



tl;dr- Video game translation's more than what you see it as. That was totally asinine, ZippyDSMlee.

Not really a few non critical titles even Mega man Transmission on the Cube were subtitled and not fully dub'd. Most fans will forgive engrish if at least its enough to play and enjoy the game, beyond that most common consumers wont care either way but you'll get enough random buys to make it worthwhile or at the very least pay off the subing.

It dose not have to be perfect even more so if the Japanese company looks at the problem like this you increase the budget on a game 10% but increase its sell potential 10 fold just by adding that magical English text option, now for text heavy games it may be a problem but thats where coming together and developing a system that can quickly process it(like anime dose these days) will come into play... but they have to find a lack of not making money from that a problem first..... ignoring being shot will not stop the bleeding damnit.....

Now other than that the my grammar was assenie but the thought is hardly, whats asinine is is the perfection complex in the industry it has to do this before we dub it it has to do that before we want to make money..... god...a few basic things will expand their market 10 fold accepting this is a single world and just adding English subs as a cost of business seems far to complicated for them... hell look how long it took them to figure out that getting subs on anime and getting it out to their partnered vendors makes them some money where they made none......

Now the reverse is not so true Japan is a small market whos more apt at English than other nations are apt at Japanese.

No. Most fans WOULDN'T. Not me, in any case, and I'm a fan of both franchises. First of all, the story is at the very least decent in the Layton series, and very strong in the Phoenix Wright series. One of the most important things writing a story is making sure the audience gets drawn into it, and the best way to completely kill immersion in a story is to make grammer mistakes with each sentence, which is what a translator is certain to do. You may argue that the dev team could then just go proofread everything, but that still won't make it quite work. Euphemisms, puns, and allusions to popular culture need to be changed to bridge the cultural gap. Haven't you ever wondered why Animal Crossing has such a huge translation team? For the reasons I just mentioned. In fact, they had to rework so many things to fit American culture that Nintendo retranslated the American game into Japanese and resold it.

Subtitles are fine, but they also require a bit of work. You have to write out the subs in a way that makes sense to the audience, and then you have to time them.

If I had a choice between a crappy fan translation for less money and a professional translation done well for more money, I would choose the professionally done one, unless the price is completely unreasonable. Also, if the only choice was an Engrish translation, I'd boycott the game until a decent translation comes out.

Need more proof?
The miracle never happen.

Ah sad another un believer another corporate sheep.... oh and half the time fan subs are done with more care trying to translate it than the dubers do with watered down americanized sub scripts and even worse bad voice acting over bad English dub scripts........

In the the end instead of having it out there they don't have it out there and have a smaller market to sell to and well always have a smaller market to see to until they get over themselves and take basic steps to insert English text into a game from the start.

 

[eightbitsprite]

Ah sad another un believer another corporate sheep.... oh and half the time fan subs are done with more care trying to translate it than the dubers do with watered down americanized sub scripts and even worse bad voice acting over bad English dub scripts........

In the the end instead of having it out there they don't have it out there and have a smaller market to sell to and well always have a smaller market to see to until they get over themselves and take basic steps to insert English text into a game from the start.

Wait, from where do you get the impression that the game will have subpar translation. Looking at the previous games from both series, it's easy to at least have a little faith in them. Also, you were talking about how the developer should just insert Engrish into the games and how it would still sell. When did we switch to fansubs? And not all localized scripts are bad, as evidenced by THE GAMES THIS CROSSOVER IS DRAWING FROM.

And the last part is particularly insulting. What you're saying is that Japanese game developers should just make their game in English, and if you are and I'm not reading this wrongly, then you need to some reality pills. The games are made in Japan. Why wouldn't it be in Japanese? Yes, English is the most international language in the world. And yes, Japanese people probably take language courses. But it's still their second language. It'll take a long time for them to get used to it. Not to mention that part of the fanbase are the school children, and I don't think that they'd be proficient at the language quite yet for some odd reason. It makes sense that game developers want their audience to understand what they're saying, don't you think?

In conclusion, your reasons are need to be seriously re-examined. As I have deducted the fact that you're just trolling, don't bother replying. But you will anyways, as it has been established that you don't read the posts anyways. Prove me wrong, and I'll lose a tiny bit of extreme dislike for you. Like 0.0000001%.

 

[Semudara]

Mlehhhh!

Mleh!

In the spirit of Phoenix Wright, some issues here:

- eightbitsprite, you're the one who changed it to fan-subbing. Which, yes, was a bit of a non-sequitur. Also, your conclusion isn't terribly constructive. The rest, though, is a pretty solid argument.

- ZippyDSMlee, your arguments have regressed into sheer nonsense. What is it, really, that's bothering you? Are you somehow convinced that they will never put in the time and effort for a full localization? Because that's really jumping to conclusions. Like I said in my response to you, if you had read it instead of skipping right to eightbitsprite's for absolutely no reason, they took a risk with the Layton games and it paid off. So why are you so sure that they won't do it with this? And why are you even bringing up poor localization in a thread about Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton? Come back when you've reconsidered your reasoning.

You guys can keep arguing if you want, but let's try not to escalate this. Also, have both of you gone to the original original blog post to express your support for a localization? Because if you do want this game, then you really should.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Mlehhhh!

Mleh!

In the spirit of Phoenix Wright, some issues here:

- eightbitsprite, you're the one who changed it to fan-subbing. Which, yes, was a bit of a non-sequitur. Also, your conclusion isn't terribly constructive. The rest, though, is a pretty solid argument.

- ZippyDSMlee, your arguments have regressed into sheer nonsense. What is it, really, that's bothering you? Are you somehow convinced that they will never put in the time and effort for a full localization? Because that's really jumping to conclusions. Like I said in my response to you, if you had read it instead of skipping right to eightbitsprite's for absolutely no reason, they took a risk with the Layton games and it paid off. So why are you so sure that they won't do it with this? And why are you even bringing up poor localization in a thread about Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton? Come back when you've reconsidered your reasoning.

You guys can keep arguing if you want, but let's try not to escalate this. Also, have both of you gone to the original original blog post to express your support for a localization? Because if you do want this game, then you really should.

Just trying to make the point if you spend alil more money on a project and have it so it has the basic reqs for playability in the US and UK markets(subs tiles) you will make more moeny or at the least make up the difference in doing basic sub work on each title. Simple because how large the US and UK(AKA English speaking nations) are. But no typical corporate inane reaction "It can't be done because we can not make money off dubbing it!!111".
I been putting up with the inane corporate zombie mindsets for the better part of 10 years in media they have gutted game industries creativity and wonderment because they have to ok everything through anal pessimistic bean counters with no life.....

 

[Semudara]

Just trying to make the point if you spend alil more money on a project and have it so it has the basic reqs for playability in the US and UK markets(subs tiles) you will make more moeny or at the least make up the difference in doing basic sub work on each title. Simple because how large the US and UK(AKA English speaking nations) are. But no typical corporate inane reaction "It can't be done because we can not make money off dubbing it!!111".
I been putting up with the inane corporate zombie mindsets for the better part of 10 years in media they have gutted game industries creativity and wonderment because they have to ok everything through anal pessimistic bean counters with no life.....

Hm. It's a little incoherent, but you do actually bring up some interesting points.

I have noticed at least two things that really bother me, which I believe are related to what you're saying:

- Videogame makers seem to see dubbing as a necessity, when most people would be happy with subtitles. This is especially egregious in two examples I can think of, "Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World" and "Arc Rise Fantasia", both games that looked awesome and probably would be awesome if they hadn't decided to make the most ear-splittingly awful dub tracks imaginable instead of having subtitles. Professor Layton is a rarity, in that it's an example of dubbing done well, and that actually enhances immersion seeing as those games take place in England. If they can't do that, why dub at all? As you say, it would be cheaper not to.

- It would be really nice if companies had the guts to take more risks. I've seen many editorials lamenting what seems to be a fairly recent but powerful trend toward games that are likely to sell, instead of risky experiments. The fact is, those original experiments DON'T always do as well as another samey title, but it's important for companies to try. Such attempts got us Portal and Psychonauts, among others. There's been an unfortunate amount of stagnation in creativity lately, but hopefully that trend is beginning to reverse. Surely, some of the bigger companies have enough money that they can afford some creative risks?

To complicate that last point, why do you suppose Nintendo hasn't translated and released Mother 3 in the United States yet? There's been a lot of demand, and an anthology with all three Mother titles would probably sell quite a bit. Maybe the hordes demanding Mother 3 are actually just a really vocal minority, but it seems like Nintendo doesn't have that much of a financial incentive to NOT localize Mother 3. So why haven't they?

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Just trying to make the point if you spend alil more money on a project and have it so it has the basic reqs for playability in the US and UK markets(subs tiles) you will make more moeny or at the least make up the difference in doing basic sub work on each title. Simple because how large the US and UK(AKA English speaking nations) are. But no typical corporate inane reaction "It can't be done because we can not make money off dubbing it!!111".
I been putting up with the inane corporate zombie mindsets for the better part of 10 years in media they have gutted game industries creativity and wonderment because they have to ok everything through anal pessimistic bean counters with no life.....

Hm. It's a little incoherent, but you do actually bring up some interesting points.

I have noticed at least two things that really bother me, which I believe are related to what you're saying:

- Videogame makers seem to see dubbing as a necessity, when most people would be happy with subtitles. This is especially egregious in two examples I can think of, "Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World" and "Arc Rise Fantasia", both games that looked awesome and probably would be awesome if they hadn't decided to make the most ear-splittingly awful dub tracks imaginable instead of having subtitles. Professor Layton is a rarity, in that it's an example of dubbing done well, and that actually enhances immersion seeing as those games take place in England. If they can't do that, why dub at all? As you say, it would be cheaper not to.

- It would be really nice if companies had the guts to take more risks. I've seen many editorials lamenting what seems to be a fairly recent but powerful trend toward games that are likely to sell, instead of risky experiments. The fact is, those original experiments DON'T always do as well as another samey title, but it's important for companies to try. Such attempts got us Portal and Psychonauts, among others. There's been an unfortunate amount of stagnation in creativity lately, but hopefully that trend is beginning to reverse. Surely, some of the bigger companies have enough money that they can afford some creative risks?

To complicate that last point, why do you suppose Nintendo hasn't translated and released Mother 3 in the United States yet? There's been a lot of demand, and an anthology with all three Mother titles would probably sell quite a bit. Maybe the hordes demanding Mother 3 are actually just a really vocal minority, but it seems like Nintendo doesn't have that much of a financial incentive to NOT localize Mother 3. So why haven't they?

Apologies if grammar harms brains(it makez im mushy for easier consumption ...he he he he).

Anyway I am learning disabled and grammar alludes me, collage reading skill dose not come with collage elvel writing skill...oh the joys of being a zippy. LOL

Corporate has this less is more mindset, that bug/beta testing and dumbing down a game(which removes or lower qaulity or options) for a wider demo always ensures them a wider bottom line, regardless of the fact it dose not. It dose however streamline the process of cycles of game pitch(which these days is automatically selected 2 or 3 games ahead of it),dev,to market,selling,repeat.

Sorry for the rambling,ect.

Anyway looking at anime they had an epiphany that getting it to the English markets asap makes them money from where they made none before, is it perfect hell no! Its the process of business IE give and take, the less you give(IE make easy to buy, priced for ease of sell,ect) the less you take at least IMO.

The game industry or the media industry for that matter wants to nickle and dime us as much as they can while doing the least amount of work, regions is one way to do this but this IMO has hurt the game industry more than say home video. Not to mention it has to be said home video is a universal media format and gaming is still "stuck" in a format war mentality, this IMO raises prices and crates many difficulties in operation and flow because there are to many middle men.

JP games really need a sponsored system where translation happens quickly and efficiently and can be easily packed with the game, now for dubing that is essentially a different ball game because you are going to localize it as much as you can creating a project on the level of 1/4-1/2 of a whole game Dubbing er localizing should only happen on proven games while everything else get a descent level of sub work(all voice and most text, signs and such not so much unless the game is unplayable without it).

The games then need to be multi region compatible, but we can not make them all such as it harms their distributional system(rolls eyes) So you make the non normal release IE LE and some SE multi region at a 25% price increse unless you are going to port and loco'ize a Special release there is no need to have the SE be multi region.

It seems to me it would easily work, more games are available for purchase at launch and when they go discount(which will be the majority of sells as who wants a 100$ import with subs, sure some will but most will be the sub 50$ stuff).

Now if you do not get into policing prices and who sells what **coughsonycough** then you can export the games at a 60$ price range and most online shops can offer direct drop shipments or sell the damn things themselves directly to the consumer.


IMO there is a huge market there but the industry is unwilling to do a damn thing with it because its complacent with ironically less because they refuse to re evaluate their antiquated distrobusionary model....

/train wreck
sorry >>

 

[Magnalian]

For the love of god, someone get me this guy's email adress.

(that came out creepier than I intended.)

 

[LordAndrew]

"Capcom might release the game outside of Japan if fans showed enough support."

Still waiting on Monster Hunter 2 there, Capcom.

this game will never come out in america

 

[eightbitsprite]

In the spirit of Phoenix Wright, some issues here:

- eightbitsprite, you're the one who changed it to fan-subbing. Which, yes, was a bit of a non-sequitur. Also, your conclusion isn't terribly constructive. The rest, though, is a pretty solid argument.

- ZippyDSMlee, your arguments have regressed into sheer nonsense. What is it, really, that's bothering you? Are you somehow convinced that they will never put in the time and effort for a full localization? Because that's really jumping to conclusions. Like I said in my response to you, if you had read it instead of skipping right to eightbitsprite's for absolutely no reason, they took a risk with the Layton games and it paid off. So why are you so sure that they won't do it with this? And why are you even bringing up poor localization in a thread about Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton? Come back when you've reconsidered your reasoning.

You guys can keep arguing if you want, but let's try not to escalate this. Also, have both of you gone to the original original blog post to express your support for a localization? Because if you do want this game, then you really should.

Odd. I think that ZippyDSMlee mentioned subs in his previous post... but that's all water under the bridge by now. And my conclusion most certainly was not very constructive... I think I got a bit cranky. -_-;
And yes, I have gone to the original blogpost to support a localization. I made an account just for that purpose.

 

[Bynine]

Professor Layton sold well here...

Ace Attorney sold well here...

Both of them required heavy translation..

WHY NOT, CAPCOM?

 

[SoulSalmon]

Ok, a few things.
1) Yes! WANTSES!
2) Game translations aren't easy, ESPECIALLY for a PL or PW game, They would essentially need to re-write the whole story and EVERY detail must be EXACT for PL and PW or the games don't work.
3) WAAAAANTSESSSSSSSS!!! T.T
4) Yeah this won't happen... 90% of Australia England and the US combined could show up at the offices in person and it probably won't happen... I already got my hopes up for KH Final Mix releases and quite a few other pieces of epic... but it seems that the more I want something, the more likely it is to be Jap exclusive T.T

 

[Lewieroo0]

i had an inkling feeling in the back of my spine that we would be denied another classic game lets hope a petition is started so that we can show Capcom that the West needs this crossover game.

 

[alik44]

...curious do they plan to re-lease the game in the na

 

[Aprilgold]

COME ON CAPCOM, PORT THAT ASS!