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English Release


shane3x
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Have we got any indicator or official confirmation that they will release the card game in English at all? If so would it probably be released around the time the game comes out in English next year?

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No word yet, sadly, and believe me, EVERYONE here would share such a thing as soon as such news would hit the internet. We have some slight hope as the character designer for Awakening and Fates more or less said that if the game did well in Japan, they would consider it when answering a fan's question on the subject. You can see it here:

http://fireemblemcipher.blogspot.com/2015/07/news-kozaki-hints-at-international.html

Seeing as there were over 100 tournies for Cipher in June alone, it has already gotten some popularity (which is especially crazy, since it was LATE June when it was released). Another bit of hope is the fact that Nintendo is actually marketing the game towards adults in Japan, and the average age of TCG players in the west is significantly higher than over there, where it is still mostly kids.

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I'm pretty sure they'll be aware of export numbers and foreign interest as well.

As far as I'm concerned, this game is 90% likely to release at least the first set/decks alongside the western release of Fates.

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The probability of Cipher's localization is approximately equivalent to the level of interest it sustains in the west. It may feel impossible, and I think FE fans are especially accustomed to the disappointment of things not coming over, but we're actually in a very good position for Cipher to get an English-language launch. Nintendo is a large company with a lot of resources, whereas other games like Vanguard are made by very small companies (Bushiroad) that have to actually create their international branches on the fly as they try to get their TCGs in the west. Nintendo of America is in the 1k~5k employees bracket; Bushrioad USA has eight permanent employees. So we know that Cipher definitely can come over, but it's a question of mitigating risk to the point where both Nintendo and NoA feels like it's a smart gamble to translate the game and market it. The company has to have the assurance that sustained interest will keep the product in demand with wholesale distributors, who in turn need to know that they'll have buyers--retailers like Wal-mart and Target won't cut it, they need local businesses and dedicated card shops that deal in both sealed product and single cards. The biggest orders for sealed product come from local distributors that are opening anywhere between two and twelve cases (16 boxes per case) to do mass online and offline sales of single cards at a ~$30 profit per box. Online stores like iDeal808 or Troll and Toad only deal in online and don't have to pay to keep a physical store running, hence they can both order more product and sell to a larger audience, but they alone can't sustain the game either because you need dedicated play spaces for players or interest plummets and you lose buyers.

The fact that Nintendo & IntSys did launch the product at all means they know it's not a risky business decision in their home country. Japan has a much better infrastructure to support TCGs than the Americas or the European Union countries. The geography is better adjusted to having a sizable network card shops all supported by a huge urban retail network. The question for the west is: will 670,000 Awakening units sold in the US translate to that many players of Cipher in the US? Will 340,000 Awakening units sold in Europe translate to 340,000 Cipher players in Europe? Trading card games can be more profitable than video games on a large scale because each player has to invest more in their deck across a long period of time than they do in a video game. The single purchase of a video game with the cumulative DLC purchases added on will always be lower than the single purchase of a starter deck with the cumulative booster pack purchases added on. Marketing to the 20+ audience means marketing to an employed, affluent section of the population with leisure money available. That can be advantageous compared to marketing to children, because you're really trying to get the parents to buy in at that point, and they're unlikely to have an understanding of the TCG market or where and how to buy intelligently. But the barrier of entry for Cipher is that only Fire Emblem players are interested in it, and of those only a subsection are interested in TCGs. In order to win the crowd, Nintendo has to take advantage of its clout with the Pokémon TCG, and get tabletop gamers in general to be interested in Cipher. Introducing it at the next Origins Game Fair, or Anime Expo would be a great way to launch the game in the west because you have a huge accumulation of different populations with divergent but overlapping interests in one place. The main obstacle is that the game mechanics aren't very easily understood to someone who doesn't already have a background with Fire Emblem.

The quick and easy way to get Cipher localized is to sustain the hype and create demand in the west for a product we don't have. If Nintendo gauges that demand and finds it above a key threshold where the game becomes profitable, they'll invest in localizing it. They've made worse business decisions on far less encouraging data; the collectible New Super Mario Bros. cards come to mind.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
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  • 9 months later...

At this point, I think it's highly unlikely, for what it's worth. People were holding out hope that it might see a release after Fates came out in NA, then again when Fates came out in Europe. We've missed the window where it would be reasonable to announce the English release. It's still possible, of course, just not probable or even likely.

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I know this is kind of a long shot but maybe we could try contacting the Force of Will company to see if they have any interest in publishing the game outside of Japan.

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This is just a pot shot in the dark, but what if FE mobile is actually a digital version of Cipher like the Game Boy Pokemon TCG games? Or, maybe Cipher will get announced alongside the English release of FE Mobile

Probably not, if they wanted to put transactions into the game, they would probably make it a normal Fire Emblem game.

Perhaps, who really knows anything at this point though.

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This is just a pot shot in the dark, but what if FE mobile is actually a digital version of Cipher like the Game Boy Pokemon TCG games? Or, maybe Cipher will get announced alongside the English release of FE Mobile

Really doubt it as they don't want to cannibalize the physical product's sales.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I really don't think a petition like that is going to do anything. If Nintendo thought it would be profitable to localise FE0, they probably would have done so already. They've kind of missed their best opportunity; namely, the release of Fates. Maybe when the mobile game releases, but I feel like that probably won't have the same sort of gravitational pull that Fates would have had.

That said, I don't know much about business practices, and I would absolutely love for Nintendo and IS to prove me wrong and localise the game.

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  • 2 months later...

Has anybody made a fan translation of the cards or no.

The Wiki has a whole fan translation database on all cards. Links in are in my signature below the Elincia banner. I'll link it later if you still need it later as I can't right now.

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