A group has been making waves across some of the gaming press for organizing a "mission" to bring Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower to North America. Their tactics included setting up a twitter feed, pre-ordering massive quantities of Xenoblade on Amazon, and writing emails and letters to Reggie Fils-Aime.
While I too am excited for all of these fairly fantastic-looking games, I also just feel fatigued by this whole thing. There are so many games to play, both modern and retro, that people should perhaps be taking this time to look back rather than pound the ground and complain about Nintendo "abandoning" the core gamer. Here's the deal: when Nintendo stated that they have "no plans" to release these games in North America, that is categorically not the same thing as an outright denial, and I'd put dollars to donuts that we'll see these games in North America, especially when the money is being spent on localizing Xenoblade and The Last Story for the British market. With the exception of The Last Story, fairly niche JRPG games were never going to set the North American market on fire, so spending a bunch of time on them at E3 probably doesn't make sense from a business point of view.
I guarantee that when some media summit comes around in the coming months, Nintendo will announce these games and this whole "operation" will have been for naught. It kind of reeks of desperation and sadness, I find. Get a new hobby! Read a book! Go outdoors! Play some older games! It's nice to see this kind of passion from gamers, but kind of sad as well! And if you're really desperate and they're really not going to release these games in North America, import! Maybe it's irresponsible of Nintendo to piss off such a vocal minority, but their focus – the 3DS and Wii U – are ultimately a lot more exciting to me than these games are. And I really want to play them, too, for the record.