SE taking Europe seriously at last?

[Gilthas]

Voice-overs on a live-action movie and voice-overs on an animation/CG are two very different things.

And as "bad" as school english is (even though people who play videogames or prowl internet message boards are likely to have an above average understanding of it) its still a lot more than what you can say for japanese.

[Frenzy]

But at least my Japanese is bad enough that I can only barely follow it. FFX was really hard to play, I got the feeling I was playing two different games. There were times when the voice over out right contradicted the subtitles.

As for movies and series, I don't buy DVDs that don't contain the original voice over.
I understand and welcome localisation, but I don't think you know what it is like to have a game first localised from culture into a completely different one and after that this localisation is used to localise to yet another culture. There are times when one can trace the translations errors back via English directly to the original Japanese, because things just don't match. Or when things between games don't match up anymore. FFX-2 being a case in point, based upon the outcry following FFX, SE decided to base the German subtitles more closely on the English voice track, whoops, just lost a few plot points from the previous game, because they had been translated from Japanese and not the English version.

And I don't excatly see, how there is a difference for live action voice over and animation voice over? Both work upon the basis that the intent meaning is brought across most preferably while the mouth movements match up.

And it takes much longer for a game to come out in Europe, when they wait for the US branch to play around with it first.

[Gilthas]

You're obviously an exception if you understand japanese, the overwhelming majority of europeans gamers certainly don't understand japanese.

So yeah, sometimes the translations are bad, then the solution is improving translations, not japanese voice overs that most players won't understand.

I make a difference between live action movies and animations, because in the case of live action movies, the voice of the actor is a big part of his acting style, having another voice over it kills a big part of his representation. In the case of animations, the characters don't have a specific voice, so any actor can do the voice-over just as long as his voice fits the character.

Games take a long time to reach Europe not because the NA branch of Square has to toy over it first, but because SE wants their big releases spread out through the year so they can show big sales to their stockholders every trimester.

[Frenzy]

So yeah, sometimes the translations are bad, then the solution is improving translations, not japanese voice overs that most players won't understand.

No, the solution is giving us voice over in our own language, instead of one we most gamers here can only understand a bit better than Japanese.
And, I still have the hope, that all the space they have with the new media, finally nets us choice of voice over language.

I make a difference between live action movies and animations, because in the case of live action movies, the voice of the actor is a big part of his acting style, having another voice over it kills a big part of his representation. In the case of animations, the characters don't have a specific voice, so any actor can do the voice-over just as long as his voice fits the character.]

Uh, actually it's the same with life action movies, as long as the voice fits the character, the character is fine, no matter whether it's the original voice or not. A real voice over actor is capable of compensating.
And some animated characters are modeled after real life persons, and the voice talents are still able to bring that character to life.

Games take a long time to reach Europe not because the NA branch of Square has to toy over it first, but because SE wants their big releases spread out through the year so they can show big sales to their stockholders every trimester.

EU makes hardly a blib on their sales charts and the trimester reports most certainly don't show such nice numbers because of EU sales. JP and US are the big ones, and JP can manage well enough with spreading out it's own blockbusters (which are the main money bringers in the trimester reports).
KH:CoM for example came out one month after the JP version in the US, because they had started localisation during the production, EU still had to wait the customary six months. And it is most certainly easier, to translate when there is a fixed English version, instead of using the Japanese text version and later the English voice over (how well those mix was aptly demonstrated by FFX).

The statement that they want to expand in the EU has been repeated once a year the last few years, and they still don't distribute their own games (as they said they wanted to do in the stockholder reports of 2006).

[Lucavi]

No, the solution is giving us voice over in our own language, instead of one we most gamers here can only understand a bit better than Japanese.
And, I still have the hope, that all the space they have with the new media, finally nets us choice of voice over language.

Games would be far more expensive, since the company would have to cover the costs of translating (and hiring voice actors) for every friggin' region's language they were trying to distribute the game to.

[Rammses]

No, the solution is giving us voice over in our own language, instead of one we most gamers here can only understand a bit better than Japanese.

30 sets of voice actors for european localization? Sweet plan. There's more to Europe than France, you know. The majority of the counties in Europe don't dub television or cinema. Your statements are ridiculous.

The sooner people realise the convenience of having a worldwide secondary language, and the sooner people realise that this language already exists and is, unfortunately not, French, Spanish or German, the better. Learn English or live with sloppy second hand translations.

[Silpha]

Well, I don't think it has ever been tested to see how Japanese voices would do, so we can't say whether people really prefer voices they suposedly can understand

In case there is subtitles, i dont mind english spoken but prefers japanese. If there is no subtitle, obviously english (as bad as mine is) is better for understand.

But it's not only a matter of understand or not.
Budokai 1 sold in France = JP voices = pure win (b',')b
Later Budokais = US voices = sadinpants QQ

[Gilthas]

instead of one we most gamers here can only understand a bit better than Japanese.

I'm sorry, but this is utter bullshit. The average gamer doesn't understand english a bit better, they understand it a LOT better.

Uh, actually it's the same with life action movies, as long as the voice fits the character, the character is fine, no matter whether it's the original voice or not. A real voice over actor is capable of compensating.
And some animated characters are modeled after real life persons, and the voice talents are still able to bring that character to life.

To each his own I guess. Here in Portugal everyone hates voice-overs in live-action series, to the point where you rarely see them, yet no one is bothered with animations having portuguese dubs.

EU makes hardly a blib on their sales charts and the trimester reports most certainly don't show such nice numbers because of EU sales. JP and US are the big ones, and JP can manage well enough with spreading out it's own blockbusters (which are the main money bringers in the trimester reports).

Main FF games still sell around 1 million units here in Europe, that's hardly what I'd consider a blib. And how many of these JP onry blockbusters exist? I see only DQ.

KH:CoM for example came out one month after the JP version in the US, because they had started localisation during the production, EU still had to wait the customary six months.

And why did EU have to wait 6 months? It certainly wasn't the ungodly amount of text they needed to translate, maybe, I don't know, they were spreading out their releases?

(how well those mix was aptly demonstrated by FFX).

And again this is a translation issue, not a voice-over issue.

[Yuffy~]

But it's not only a matter of understand or not.
Budokai 1 sold in France = JP voices = pure win (b',')b
Later Budokais = US voices = sadinpants QQ

thats the kind of example i was thinking about. lil kids that play budokai are fond of japanese speaking more than english. they will still buy of course but thats just selling lower quality in a way.

tbh i didnt care about english until FFXI, i didnt even learn it in school (sleeping class ftw) and i was just avoiding games like FFVI. L O T S of people are acting like this, maybe a good 90% of the people buying video games in france (at least iv never seen anyone happy with english onry around me), thats dumb maybe but thats a fact.

games i buy usually have game manual in french and dutch, not even english spanish or w/e and the voices are (thanks god) JP and text english/french, GGXX for example, there are a lot more i think (famous Dynasty Warriors get french dubbed for our great sorrow but its still awesome imo <_<).

looks like each country has its preferences, i hope they will respect each country one day about this.