No Atelier Totori DLC in the Netherlands and Belgium?!

[DizzyQViper]

My point was that people just want their content accessible in their country. Not a perfectly written store description. The content itself is in English anyway. Delaying the release of the DLC for 2 missed country's for over 2 months and counting while the rest of Europe has it is not making NISA look any better.

It's just just the description, it's all the related materials and documentation they have to provide has to be in Dutch as well, so it's not really much of an issue how much customers will be satisfied with the store description.

i do would like to know what is more important than solving this issue. Missing two country's in the PAL region and doing nothing about it in a timely manner is kind a of big deal since the people from those country's will be rightfully pissed off and think twice before buying NISA games ever again.

Maybe, sorting out their new releases so they released in a timely manner with a minimal delay from the NA version? It's not like they can rush it either, as searching for someone to hire to do a job can't really be sped up in any way, as it requires contacting lots of different people.

Is it really that much to ask to just translate a a few blocks of text and submit it? The content itself is already passed QA in the rest of the EU. What is there to hold up except a few blocks of text?

As Houk's already pointed out, they like to maintain high standards, and it's more than 'just a few blocks of text', as it's not just the store description as previous mentioned. If you think it being held up just because there's some documentation not in the certain language is ridiculous, then maybe you should be taking issue with SCEE as it's their policy after all.

I'll humour you one last time.
Reread Houk's last post carefully and try to read between the marketing lines before white knighting NISA by pretending you know SCEE's official PSN Submission rules. In case you do know them, kindly link me to them. That stuff genuinely interests me.

Allow me to deconstruct houks post from my point of view and please note i don't mean this as a personal attack on Houk. The man is just doing his job and i respect that.

We have absolutely no desire to release content at that level of quality, period.

While it sounds noble and all. Houk also said earlier they cant check the quality of the translations themselves. So how can they set a high standard if they cant even check the translations quality?
To illustrate this point: My Italian friend was pretty shocked to hear that Holland missed the DLC because of this translation issue. because according to him NISA's Italian store descriptions and even the text on the game boxes and manuals are full of errors.

Anyway, although you have decided that we should have been able to resolve this by now and so have decided to get upset that we haven't, the fact is that we never laid out any kind of definite timeline or outcome for this content.

NISA claims the DLC is available in the PAL region.
Last time i checked Holland and Belgium were part of the PAL territory.

Keep in mind that our European division is only a small fraction of our total staff, and that this is far from the only issue on their plate. I appreciate your frustration at not having access to the content you want, but realize that whatever time our staff takes to look into this issue is time they're not spending on other projects.

This basicly says: Your country's missing DLC is of little interest to us and thus its on the bottom of our priority list. Except its in nicer words.
Houk's tune also went from "sometime soon" to "if/when" regarding the issue. So somewhere down the line it seems their priority's shifted. Which i find upsetting.

I am also upset because "if/when" can also mean "never" which also bodes ill for future content.

It also tells me that perhaps they should hire more staff for their EU division since i keep hearing that excuse.

There is nothing new to announce on this subject right now, but if/when there is I assure you we'll let you know.

Note he used the exact same wording as last month. Meaning they probably have done nothing about the issue in the meantime further confirming my earlier conclusion.

Continuing to get upset in this thread won't make things go any faster.

This remark makes me wonder if they really did not expect any kind of backlash from leaving out 2 entire country's.
Food for thought: Would they still have green lit the almost EU release of the totori DLC if they were missing a translator for bigger country's like Germany or France?

Also, nobody from SCEE ever contacted us about any of these issues, and if they had we would have responded as quickly and fully as possible.

Kindly refer to the screenshot of my previous post.

[myskaros]

We have absolutely no desire to release content at that level of quality, period.

While it sounds noble and all. Houk also said earlier they cant check the quality of the translations themselves. So how can they set a high standard if they cant even check the translations quality?
To illustrate this point: My Italian friend was pretty shocked to hear that Holland missed the DLC because of this translation issue. because according to him NISA's Italian store descriptions and even the text on the game boxes and manuals are full of errors.

Maybe they got enough backlash from these errors that they want to do it right moving forward now?

Keep in mind that our European division is only a small fraction of our total staff, and that this is far from the only issue on their plate. I appreciate your frustration at not having access to the content you want, but realize that whatever time our staff takes to look into this issue is time they're not spending on other projects.

This basicly says: Your country's missing DLC is of little interest to us and thus its on the bottom of our priority list. Except its in nicer words.
Houk's tune also went from "sometime soon" to "if/when" regarding the issue. So somewhere down the line it seems their priority's shifted. Which i find upsetting.

I am also upset because "if/when" can also mean "never" which also bodes ill for future content.

It also tells me that perhaps they should hire more staff for their EU division since i keep hearing that excuse.

Or maybe "We have too many other high priority projects whose deadlines are coming up soon, so we can't prioritize this right now." I'm not claiming to know anything about the current state of NISA's Europe division, but having worked in a software company it's not really surprising to hear that project X of Y size is being pushed aside to work on a project 50 times the size or importance. It's also not unheard of for projects to change in priority... situations change as time passes.

The US economy is still pretty bad, maybe they can't really afford to hire more staff right now.

Also, nobody from SCEE ever contacted us about any of these issues, and if they had we would have responded as quickly and fully as possible.

Kindly refer to the screenshot of my previous post.

I don't see Andy Stewart saying anywhere he requested NISA about it. If you assume both Houk and Andy are not lying to you, then the obvious conclusion would be that SCEE is the cause of the problem.

[myskaros]

About "translating a few blocks of text," no matter how "easy" it is, you can't just "do it" and then release it for general consumption, not as a responsible software company. If it really is as easy as it sounds, then chances are it isn't done yet because whoever is in charge of it has a pile of more important, similarly "easy" tasks to do before getting to that one. Maybe translating text for a game or rulebook that's due for release soon, I don't now.

Think of it like homework: if you have 2 projects to do, one worth 100 points, one worth 5 points, and you don't know how long either project will take, it's not worth your time to do the 5 point project, just in case you don't end up having time to do both projects.

[DizzyQViper]

Enjoying the all the NISA content you have access to myskaros? Its easy to make up excuses for their actions if they don't negatively effect you.

i know im in the lions den here but this is the only place i can think of where i can let my voice be heard and just maybe get some gears in motion.

[myskaros]

Doesn't affect me either way, I don't do DLC, mostly due to the Disgaea 3 sale fiasco. Thanks for asking, though!

I'm just sharing my experience from a software development perspective. Whether you choose to believe me or not is up to you. I'm with you 100% that, if you're unsatisfied, you should definitely post something so that NISA knows. But, I will refute the (few) points where I know there is a reasonable explanation.

[DizzyQViper]

Doesn't affect me either way, I don't do DLC, mostly due to the Disgaea 3 sale fiasco. Thanks for asking, though!

I'm just sharing my experience from a software development perspective. Whether you choose to believe me or not is up to you. I'm with you 100% that, if you're unsatisfied, you should definitely post something so that NISA knows. But, I will refute the (few) points where I know there is a reasonable explanation.

I did 2 years of marketing communication as part of a graphics design course. So from my perspective i see allot of excuses and no solutions from NISA.

As the Dutch say: Trust comes on foot and goes by horse. Lets just say NISA has a long walk before i ever pre-order one of their games again if they keep this up.

[Solice]

@RingWraith
@Solice

You accuse me of ignoring stuff while you both ignore CelticRedemptions offer to translate for them? They have a willing translator. And i'm sure he would be thrilled to work for NISA for future projects.

Yes, I do accuse you. Just as I now accuse you of ignoring their response to what you pointed out, also in this same thread.

I did 2 years of marketing communication as part of a graphics design course. So from my perspective i see allot of excuses and no solutions from NISA.

I suppose this in-depth study of market and industry mechanics provides you with the corporate inner workings of companies, like NISA that would give you the appropriate clout to point out where they can ignore the processes, contracts, obligations, and partnerships that they have already in order to push out a DLC package sooner. Good work. Next, can you please work on preventing a future oil crisis? Your talents are being wasted here.

EDIT: I realize you're irritated, but please at least have some justification for what you say. You can't just arbitrarily say things like "they're not doing it!" when they've already indicated in the same thread that they're doing everything they can at the speed they're able with what they have.

[myskaros]

+1 Solice.

As the Dutch say: Trust comes on foot and goes by horse. Lets just say NISA has a long walk before i ever pre-order one of their games again if they keep this up.

If this is what you're going to pull, I'll bow out of this conversation now rather than get caught up in pointless arguments. You clearly are at the point where your opinion is set, no amount of evidence or persuasion will sway you.

"How do you convert an Atheist? Have God appear before him." I doubt you are going to get the answer you're looking for any time soon, but good luck waiting for it nonetheless. I mean this with no venom.

[Ringwraith]

I'll humour you one last time.
Reread Houk's last post carefully and try to read between the marketing lines before white knighting NISA by pretending you know SCEE's official PSN Submission rules. In case you do know them, kindly link me to them. That stuff genuinely interests me.

Or maybe, ya know, read Houk's first post:

Hey there,

The reason that we haven't released this content yet in your region is that while we aren't required to translate the game itself into Dutch, there are a number of other game-related resources and documents that must be submitted along with the DLC, and those must be translated into Dutch. We are currently looking for a reliable Dutch translator to take care of this, so hopefully we will be able to release the Totori DLC sometime soon. In the meantime, we hope you can bear with us until we can finalize our approach. Thanks!

This seems to make it clear there's other stuff that needs to be translating, and it's probably a lot of stuff you never see, so you can't say that translation is poorly done, as we simply don't know.

Allow me to deconstruct houks post from my point of view and please note i don't mean this as a personal attack on Houk. The man is just doing his job and i respect that.

Funnily enough, this isn't actually his job, it's just something he's taken upon himself to do, so even with these posts he's taking time out to do them.

We have absolutely no desire to release content at that level of quality, period.

While it sounds noble and all. Houk also said earlier they cant check the quality of the translations themselves. So how can they set a high standard if they cant even check the translations quality?

Which is why they are taking their time finding someone to do it, as they want someone who comes with recommendations because of that exact point:

I think the Euro division has a company they're going through to look for people (since we can't verify the quality of the translation ourselves, we're looking for recommendations from people/companies we've worked with) but if they don't find anything we'll definitely keep it in mind!

To illustrate this point: My Italian friend was pretty shocked to hear that Holland missed the DLC because of this translation issue. because according to him NISA's Italian store descriptions and even the text on the game boxes and manuals are full of errors.

This isn't quite the same, as there's no box or manual due to being DLC, and I've already pointed out that it seems that there's much more stuff than we ever see that has to be translated.

Anyway, although you have decided that we should have been able to resolve this by now and so have decided to get upset that we haven't, the fact is that we never laid out any kind of definite timeline or outcome for this content.

NISA claims the DLC is available in the PAL region.
Last time i checked Holland and Belgium were part of the PAL territory.

Well, it's currently an unusual exception, (not to mention there's no actual space for such notes in there), and Houk was more referring to this specific case of where it's not been yet released and why, and this was also relating to the period of time (which was a month) between his original post in this thread explaining the situation, and your post asking if you've been forgotten. Also, saying it's contradicting a generalised table likely set up before the issue became apparent, it comes off a little bit pedantic. You've been given an answer, and saying it's going against something written from before that answer was given.

Keep in mind that our European division is only a small fraction of our total staff, and that this is far from the only issue on their plate. I appreciate your frustration at not having access to the content you want, but realize that whatever time our staff takes to look into this issue is time they're not spending on other projects.

This basicly says: Your country's missing DLC is of little interest to us and thus its on the bottom of our priority list. Except its in nicer words.

No it doesn't, you're presuming, it's saying they've got a lot of things to do, therefore they can't sort it as quickly as they would like, if it really was of little interest to them, they wouldn't be bothering to sort it, and you likely wouldn't have even gotten a reply to the original question this thread asked.

Houk's tune also went from "sometime soon" to "if/when" regarding the issue. So somewhere down the line it seems their priority's shifted. Which i find upsetting.

That's an incorrect reading of that post, as the phrase you singled out is part of the sentence:

...so hopefully we will be able to release the Totori DLC sometime soon.

Which does not imply anything about its position on the list of priorities.

I am also upset because "if/when" can also mean "never" which also bodes ill for future content.

Coming from NISA, I can assure when they say they are looking into something or otherwise trying to get it sorted, they are, if they say it's impossible or they have no plans of doing they'll just outright say that.
They mean 'never' when they say 'never', and at no other time.

It also tells me that perhaps they should hire more staff for their EU division since i keep hearing that excuse.

In an ideal world that would be great, but I doubt there's enough work to justify the cost of hiring someone else, if they were that understaffed they would already be rectifying that problem. It's not like this is a recurring problem either, so they'd be little point in hiring someone to find a translator, as what would they do after that?

Continuing to get upset in this thread won't make things go any faster.

This remark makes me wonder if they really did not expect any kind of backlash from leaving out 2 entire country's.

You posted asking what happened to the DLC, you got a response saying they're working on it, and then nothing constructive has really been said afterwards, from either side, as the issue originally posted about is still in the same situation.
You also put it as though they deliberately withheld the DLC from those places, as if they really weren't concerned about the 'backlash' you wouldn't have gotten a reply at all.

Also, nobody from SCEE ever contacted us about any of these issues, and if they had we would have responded as quickly and fully as possible.

Kindly refer to the screenshot of my previous post.

You've heard both sides to this, therefore it's likely it got lost somewhere. Messages often get lost to the ether.

i know im in the lions den here but this is the only place i can think of where i can let my voice be heard and just maybe get some gears in motion.

The ones already in motion? You've already got a response saying they were already moving to solve the problem before you even raised the issue, so there's nothing else you can do to speed the process along.

[DizzyQViper]

+1 Solice.

As the Dutch say: Trust comes on foot and goes by horse. Lets just say NISA has a long walk before i ever pre-order one of their games again if they keep this up.

If this is what you're going to pull, I'll bow out of this conversation now rather than get caught up in pointless arguments. You clearly are at the point where your opinion is set, no amount of evidence or persuasion will sway you.

"How do you convert an Atheist? Have God appear before him." I doubt you are going to get the answer you're looking for any time soon, but good luck waiting for it nonetheless. I mean this with no venom.

Funny you mentioned Disgaea 3 earlier. Did you know it took NISA almost a year to release the trophy patch in the EU after the US got it? The current situation is almost an exact repeat of this.
They stayed silent about it at first until enough people started asking questions and even after that they stayed vague about it.
Yes we did got the patch in the end but by then is was too little, too late.
Imagine if Bethesda pulled a stunt like that with a Skyrim patch. The gaming press would have a field day.

I thought they had learned from that until this pulled this one. This is what i mean with trust.

Indeed i'll by persuaded if hear something solid like a Date, ETA or a No straight from the horses mouth. if's, when's or any other variation of Valve Time™ just wont cut it.

But thanks nonetheless. I shall be waiting with low expectations.

[Ringwraith]

Funny you mentioned Disgaea 3 earlier. Did you know it took NISA almost a year to release the trophy patch in the EU after the US got it? The current situation is almost an exact repeat of this.
They stayed silent about it at first until enough people started asking questions and even after that they stayed vague about it.
Yes we did got the patch in the end but by then is was too little, too late.
Imagine if Bethesda pulled a stunt like that with a Skyrim patch. The gaming press would have a field day

I didn't own Disgaea 3 until almost exactly a year ago now, so I wouldn't know about that, but your provided example isn't exactly equatable, seeing as NISA is no-where near the size that Bethesda is, and they don't even publish they own games in Europe (it was Square-Enix with Disgaea 3), so the situation is very different.

[Solice]

Funny you mentioned Disgaea 3 earlier. Did you know it took NISA almost a year to release the trophy patch in the EU after the US got it? The current situation is almost an exact repeat of this.
They stayed silent about it at first until enough people started asking questions and even after that they stayed vague about it.
Yes we did got the patch in the end but by then is was too little, too late.
Imagine if Bethesda pulled a stunt like that with a Skyrim patch. The gaming press would have a field day.

Additional research required. Mine more research. Here is a digest of a number of posts all over the place regarding the matter, since you're too busy stewing to do it before posting... and quite frankly, I can see how it might be missed.

I recall the Disgaea 3 trophy patch event. Sony had decided that trophies were a requirement to publishing games on the PS3 to compete with Microsoft's Achievements. Games that were already released were grandfathered into not needing them. Disgaea 3 had been grandfathered. However, after a considerable amount of customer feedback, NIS decided that Disgaea 3 would receive a trophy patch. Since this was not a revenue-generating task and would only consume resources to accomplish, it wasn't as high on the development priority list. Games in development had top billing for resources, and the NIS/A/-E organizations didn't have a lot of people to dedicate.

To make things more complicated, the American and European branches don't have programmers. Code changes were required to be made for each phase of implementation and testing of the trophies, which had to be worked on in (at least) 3 different forks of the code. The changes had to be sent back to the Japanese branch to have their programmers make the alterations (not just text replacement tasks here!), compile, test, certify, and send it back before going through another round. Just considering these facts, there's easy justification for a year before even discussing the heaps of red tape and planning that goes into these things beforehand, and the logistics of certifying it for release, or even that it needs to be released in roughly 300% more languages for the EU than it does for the US.

...and Bethsoft DID do that with Oblivion, and it's still like that. From my understanding, they're doing that with Skyrim right now. Despite all the good things they've done with the release of Skyrim, they've managed to once again roll out a game with look and feel, bug testing (and to a large degree, fixing), and enhancement being left to the community. However, I won't let that take away from all the awesome they managed to do with the (PC) release of Skyrim (releasing a full game and not relying on DLC to make it float, releasing mod tools to allow the game to live as the community wills it, ...), and it's still early in it's product life.

Once again, your examples fail your rage. I think a more productive use of your post count (and the community's sanity) might be to prod every so often. I seriously doubt that a company that exists solely by the will (and wallets) of it's patrons will fail to do everything they reasonably can to get this out. However, it would be corporate suicide to over allocate resources that are to be used for current projects. As was said already, if they haven't flat out said "no" by now, then a modicum of patience would do well to get it out sooner. If they do encounter a "no" situation, they've been pretty responsive with letting us know about it as soon as they're able.

[dgnfly]

@Solice
@myskaros
@Ringwraith

first off would you guys just STFU cause first this post doesen´t even concern you if you not in a region that diden´t get the DLC
2ndly we came here for awnsers. not from you but from america NIS the reason this post dragged on is cause you guys kept dragging it on
3rd you guys are bias you act like this company can´t do no wrong your constant pointless continue´d reply show it now would you ppl just Shut up in the future if your not involved in the problem.
4th i hope you guys stop interfering if we ask for pogress.

[myskaros]

first off would you guys just STFU

Hmm, I'm going to opt for no. Didn't bother reading the rest of your post. Have fun getting anyone to take you seriously.

[Ringwraith]

First off would you guys just STFU cause first this post doesen´t even concern you if you not in a region that diden´t get the DLC

Some of us have previous experience with delays or missing content, or at least some more knowledge of how things fit together. Incidentally, that's also a really good way to start a post you don't want people to read.

2ndly we came here for awnsers. not from you but from america NIS the reason this post dragged on is cause you guys kept dragging it on

We're trying to impart explanations for things so you can better understand the entire picture. Also, if you're saying we're guilty of dragging it on, you are too.

3rd you guys are bias you act like this company can´t do no wrong your constant pointless continue´d reply show it now would you ppl just Shut up in the future if your not involved in the problem.

We'd all be the first to admit NISA aren't perfect, and can't do everything we'd like them to, like how we don't get EU limited editions (only art books if we're lucky), the delays between regional releases, and just completely missing content that will very likely never surface (there's one current example I've been caught by here). On the other hand, if we really are biased in NISA's favour, you seem to be biased against them, as you seem unwilling to have a little faith and let them sort things out, already assuming you'll never get it as they 'have so little interest' in Europe.

4th i hope you guys stop interfering if we ask for pogress.

When have we at all 'interfered' with the request and the process of it getting done? Not once have we said that you shouldn't get the DLC. If anything, our posts in this thread show that we'd like this issue to get resolved as well.