Ambarato said:
HOW TO GET THE GAME RELEASED OUTSIDE OF JAPAN: Buy the others, tell your friends about them, let them borrow them, make sure they sell well. If the layton games gradually get better sales then all will be well.
It might not be a rational desician. Both of those game series are pretty popular in the US as it is.
As I've pointed out before, there was a time when I used to be something of an "Otaku" and even read translated Japanese periodicals for things like gaming and Anime so I could find stuff out before it hit the US market. I haven't done this for a while, but one of the things that prevented me from becoming a full on Weeaboo/Wapanese is simply that I realized how racist the Japanese were, and that apparently (from what some of these periodicals were saying) that a US release could cheapen something in the eyes of Japanese fans, and actually hurt it's domestic sales. A lot of pressure being put on developers to release games as being "Japan only" even if there was more money to be made from a US release. I remember reading letters to magazines pretty much saying that the writer wouldn't buy a game if there were plans to release in the US.
There is of course a lot of things I could say connected to this, but for me the last straw had to do with a game called "Final Fantasy X: Final Mission". While that game is ancient (like 10 years ago now) it upset me paticularly because the idea was that it was going to be the final game in the storyline and answer the remaining questions. While a lot of people criticize "Final Fantasy X-2" for a number of reasons, at the time when what was going on with the end of the story was revealed (prioer to the US release of X-2) I think that was what destroyed the reception of that game. The impression I got from reading about it was that keeping the end of the story "Japanese Only" was intended in response to accusations that the series was "selling out to the west" and apparently the fact that the last part was going to be Japanese only enhanced the sales. At the time there seemed to be a lot of US bashing in general as the US also didn't get the so called "International Version" of "Final Fantasy X" (the main game) with the expanded content. It seemed to be a great joke in some of the periodicals that "International" was not going to include the US.
The point I'm getting at here is that despite there being a lot of money to be made, money does not seem to be the only motivating factor when it comes to what makes it to the US, or to any other market for that reason. We certainly hear excuses related to that, having to do with liscencing, niche audiences, or whatever else, but in the end a lot of the time there is no such reason for it, other than basic bigotry. It's hard for people in countries like the US to get their minds around how when it comes to business there can be motivations other than the bottom line (making money), yet when it comes to video games, anime, and other forms of Japanese pop culture, I think money is only one factor.
Reading around the same time also made me increasingly skeptical of liscencing claims as well. From a purely financial perspective there is no issue. After all if the game could be released in Japan, it could be released in the US, and the licenses were apparently affordable enough to to generate various crossover games to begin with. What's more, exposing IPs to the US market gives them a chance to catch on, and there is a lot of money to be made if they do, with minimal risks if they do not. Claiming liscencing conflicts provides an official sounding "dodge" to expressing the actual motivations. Of course in some cases there could be some truth to that if specific liscence holders want to keep their IP Japan only even if the game company would like an overseas release. That amounts to the same thing though.
I could be wrong of course, but this is the conclusion my experiences have lead me to.
The bottom line here is of course going to be whether the guys doing the crossover want to keep it Japan exclusive or not. Making a profit off of a title like this is going to be a given.
The only other concern is of course censorship. Given that this involves "medieval witch trials" and the like they might be portraying Westerners in a rather bigoted fashion or something. Or it could be that there will be a lot of mature or adult level content involved, such as satanism, graphic sex, and other assorted things. The issue of censorship concerns is unlikely given the source material, but given the direction creators in Japan take some of the most unlikely IPs in, it wouldn't surprise me if there are already tons of adult spin offs of both games, and how such a "fan based" creation might involve those elements. While possible I do find this far more unlikely.
