IGN Wrote:For the first time ever a fan-fueled game release campaign has actual money on the table.

We first brought you news of "Operation Rainfall" yesterday, as dedicated fans across the Internet joined forces to start seriously getting Nintendo of America's attention and ask – nay, demand – a response from the publisher about releasing Wii-exclusive titles Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower in the U.S. The diehard, fed-up gamers mobilized in several different online forum communities, swarmed Nintendo's Facebook page with comments and cataloged their actions on Twitter all while preparing to launch a physical letter-writing campaign. But perhaps more interesting (and certainly more immediate) than all of those elements has been the activity at the Internet's largest online retailer.

The game achieved the top ranking across the Wii Action Games category, then overtook all Wii games and finally pushed past all competing systems' fare to claim the overall video games #1 in a matter of mere hours on Saturday. Since the game does not have a final American name and release date (which is what the campaign is pushing for) fans accomplished the feat by pre-ordering the title using the product page Amazon first set up in 2009 – that's when NOA first announced the game with its original name, "Monado: Beginning of the World."

The game has maintained its top position as of this writing and campaign organizers are continuing to rally further support for their cause, reaching out not only to Nintendo fans but all JRPG lovers across the country and around the world. The campaign has drawn the attention of members of the Xenoblade development team at Monolith Soft in Japan who have voiced their support through Twitter, and fans are encouraging those who live in Europe to put in pre-orders for the game as well – since it's already been confirmed for release in that region under the name "Xenoblade Chronicles," they argue strong European sales could lend further aid to this American campaign.

As this all stands now, Operation Rainfall is already one of the most interesting and unique fan-fueled release campaigns ever put together. There have been groups of diehard supporters for particular Nintendo titles or series sequels in the past who have organized similar efforts, hoping to catch NOA's attention. They've rarely met with success. This one, though, has that one key thing that none of the rest of them ever did – cold hard cash.

Nintendo of America hasn't said a word about Xenoblade in two years, but since the company did officially announce "Monado" for release at E3 2009 and that Amazon product page went up, it gave fans this unique avenue of opportunity – now thousands of pre-orders representing tens of thousands of real dollars have been registered. If Nintendo wants that cash, the game just needs to ship. Simple as that.

Quote:But here’s the bad news for North America. Since Xenoblade wasn’t announced for the territory, it was unlikely that it would show up at E3 even though Nintendo’s European division had some presence at the show. But apparently Nintendo of America said they wouldn’t let the title appear at all since they aren’t interested in displaying products that they won’t sell.

CommanderJinn Wrote:Even though they said so, don't campaigns like this do a good job showing otherwise? I mean yeah, they rarely work, but you rarely get some sort of never-going-to-be-published-in-your-region title getting top pre-orders on Amazon. Also, it was that statement on the 23rd that sparked the whole movement in the first place, even though there was a call for the localizations for the past year.

Quote:@OpRainfall Thanks for being such incredible fans! Unfortunately, there continues to be no plans for NOA to release these 3 games right now.