Xenoblade Pirates, Don't Be Stupid

Nearly one million copies of Xenoblade were acquired in 2011. That Nintendo's epic, deep RPG is seeing that much interest from gamers on a decidedly casual-centric system is remarkable. It proves Nintendo of America shouldn't have been so timid in determining a release date, or publicly declaring its plans to support the game.

There's just one problem - those million copies were pirated, downloaded globally by gamers either too cheap to pay for the game or too scorned by Nintendo to import or wait. That most of these illegal acquisitions are coming from North America, the only territory to not actually have the game publicly available, seems a reasonable conclusion to draw.

There's no denying Nintendo must own some of the blame for the massive Xenoblade piracy. By staying silent and avoiding comment on whether the Monolith Soft RPG was coming to the world's biggest video game market, Nintendo of America convinced many gamers they would never see a title that promised dozens of hours of play. With the system starved for releases, and importing the game (and a Wii for that region) too cost-prohibitive for many to consider, piracy seemed the only solution to actually have content on a near-dead system. Japanese players have watched the game sit on store shelves for years. European players have been able to buy the game for months. American players, meanwhile, were left alone in the dark, with little comment from Nintendo to keep them in the loop.

Unfortunately the stakes are a bit different now. Despite the fact that Nintendo handled the Xenoblade situation poorly, the fact that the game is officially coming to North America means it needs support. Simply put, not supporting Xenoblade will have implications for the future, in the short and long term.

The Last Story is less than two months from release in Europe, and is already out in Japan. Produced by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the game has received high praise from publications and gamers that have had a chance to play it, and would be yet another increasingly rare gem for the Wii in its last years of support. Just like with Xenoblade, however, Nintendo of America is being silent on whether it plans to bring the game to its customers. Given Xenoblade's eventual release, Last Story seems somewhat likely - but if no one supports Monolith Soft, NOA might get cold feet. Why continue to bring games to this territory if no one wants to buy them?


Signs seem to point toward reasonable pre-order figures for Xenoblade (it's currently GameStop.com's 7th Most Anticipated game and the 5th best-selling Wii game), but they're a far cry from showing the type of demand that would lead to sales of close to one million copies. Zelda: Skyward Sword, for all its buzz and the power of a major Nintendo brand behind it, just hit the million mark after being in stores for over a month - with massive hype behind it. Think about that - Xenoblade, the RPG that Nintendo seemed to doubt would perform, yielded just shy of one million downloads.

It seems ridiculous to have to reward a situation that leaves such a bad taste in all our mouths, but it's necessary. Do we want to play The Last Story without jumping through 500 hoops or do we want to simply walk to our local Best Buy? Do we want to rob those creators who have worked so diligently on the game? Do we want to make sure Nintendo understands there's a hardcore market that is still interested in its software? Do we want to have any hope of playing Dragon Quest X?

For whatever reason, Nintendo of America doesn't believe there are enough of us to make Xenoblade a success. It doubts we will actually turn up and commit to a purchase.

Let's show them we're wrong, and not do things to undermine our own interests. There's no doubt we want to play games like Xenoblade - clearly nearly one million people around the world are already doing so. Let's just make sure we also put our money where our mouth is. Ultimately, that's all Nintendo will care about.


Rich is an Executive Editor of IGN.com and the leader of the IGN Nintendo team. Follow his ridiculous adventures through MyIGN and Twitter. Keep it cool, Koopalings.

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