Incredibly sad that you guys think, or even believe to know, that NoA and NoE (or NUK as one put it for some reason) somehow act solely as distributers and publishers of Nintendo hardware and software. No. Nintendo of Japan runs the show, and there are no regulations that prevent this; it's how the company has run its international branches since the get go. NoA might have decided to change some sort of content guidelines, but no Japanese company lets its western branch tell it how business will be done; Gary Bowser or whomever got this passed did so with tacit approval from NCL.
NCL doesn't permit total independence among its international branches, or we wouldn't have missed out on so many first party titles until the Wii U and 3DS era (and I'm not talking about titles that ran amok of the early NES/SNES content guidelines; remember when Japan thought Americans couldn't handle console rpgs, despite console rpgs being exclusively based on crpgs from the west like Ultima?). Given that Japanese companies have at times prevented publication of objectionable media to the west based on differing cultural views, and the fact that the West is a far larger market than NCL's home market, without any evidence of NCL objecting to a rogue Gary Bowser, we have no reason to believe NCL is anything but happy with these decisions. They clearly believe what NoA has changed to the guidelines, whatever they may be, will protect their brand in the west, which means international revenue will stay the course and not lead to them losing face. NCL's honchos don't care about otakus getting fan service, they care about money. Letting niche Otaku rpgs or visual novels be published in Japan makes them money in that market. Allowing people to publish them in other markets might cause controversy, which would cause them to lose money. It's silly in this day and age, especially since practically every country has a ratings board that every store abides by, other than, ironically, the digital store fronts themselves.
Remember, all those game changes that were made during the wii u/3ds era couldn't have happened without NCL's complete and full cooperation. Treehouse wasn't reverse engineering those games after all, and they don't have the development team to make every change they did. Even today, much of the changes have to be made with NCL's involvement. This is a Nintendo as a whole problem, even if it's only affecting us in the West. All that it means is that Nintendo is, again, a Japanese company: they have a certain set of rules for their market, and a different set of rules for others.
I hope more news comes out for this, but even more so, I really hope people stop deifying Nintendo of Japan as though somehow they're saints in all this. I can't tell if that's just bizarre weeabooism, western paternalism, or just straight up racism.
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Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
Incredibly sad that you guys think, or even believe to know, that NoA and NoE (or NUK as one put it for some reason) somehow act solely as distributers and publishers of Nintendo hardware and software. No. Nintendo of Japan runs the show, and there are no regulations that prevent this; it's how the company has run its international branches since the get go. NoA might have decided to change some sort of content guidelines, but no Japanese company lets its western branch tell it how business will be done; Gary Bowser or whomever got this passed did so with tacit approval from NCL.
NCL doesn't permit total independence among its international branches, or we wouldn't have missed out on so many first party titles until the Wii U and 3DS era (and I'm not talking about titles that ran amok of the early NES/SNES content guidelines; remember when Japan thought Americans couldn't handle console rpgs, despite console rpgs being exclusively based on crpgs from the west like Ultima?). Given that Japanese companies have at times prevented publication of objectionable media to the west based on differing cultural views, and the fact that the West is a far larger market than NCL's home market, without any evidence of NCL objecting to a rogue Gary Bowser, we have no reason to believe NCL is anything but happy with these decisions. They clearly believe what NoA has changed to the guidelines, whatever they may be, will protect their brand in the west, which means international revenue will stay the course and not lead to them losing face. NCL's honchos don't care about otakus getting fan service, they care about money. Letting niche Otaku rpgs or visual novels be published in Japan makes them money in that market. Allowing people to publish them in other markets might cause controversy, which would cause them to lose money. It's silly in this day and age, especially since practically every country has a ratings board that every store abides by, other than, ironically, the digital store fronts themselves.
Remember, all those game changes that were made during the wii u/3ds era couldn't have happened without NCL's complete and full cooperation. Treehouse wasn't reverse engineering those games after all, and they don't have the development team to make every change they did. Even today, much of the changes have to be made with NCL's involvement. This is a Nintendo as a whole problem, even if it's only affecting us in the West. All that it means is that Nintendo is, again, a Japanese company: they have a certain set of rules for their market, and a different set of rules for others.
I hope more news comes out for this, but even more so, I really hope people stop deifying Nintendo of Japan as though somehow they're saints in all this. I can't tell if that's just bizarre weeabooism, western paternalism, or just straight up racism.