NoA showcasing FE:TH houses and their leaders in the weeks leading up to Three Houses’ release

[Tenzen12]

48 minutes ago, EdelgardHresvelgTargaryen said:

It seems like Claude is going that way though after the timeskip

with the whole "To reach out our hands in friendship so we can open our true hearts to one another. That's how we win!"

And that's fine for him imho. But in the end I don't think any of protagonists will turn to be inherently correct and that include friendship route. 

[Gregster101]

Tbh, one thing I wish Nintendo of America would do is give twitter accounts to all of their various franchises like Fire Emblem that way Western fans can also get updated easily on news. They do it with Animal Crossing, so I don't know why they don't do it with Fire Emblem.

[Kiran_]

8 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

Are you able to defend this position? The NA website is an absolute joke compared to the Japanese one. It offers little more to English speaking fans than "The game exists! Buy it!"

The dedicated fans on places like Serenes and Reddit have been in a steady stream of hype ever since the JP twitter starting posting weekly updates, not to mention the Famitsu releases. When we saw the E3 trailer, it blew our socks off because we were already engaged with the development of the game and excited for how the trailer changed our perceptions and expectations for the game. I think a casual fan or worse, a person who has never played a Fire Emblem game, would be scratching their head after seeing that trailer. It's like it came out of nowhere. I can't fathom why NoA thinks saving all of the promotion for the game for the last month or so is a better strategy than what Japan has been doing on their end.

It's a really easy position to defend if you know anything about marketing.

For one, NA knows their audience, and they know how hype is built. As you said the dedicated fans don't NEED NA to post anything because we've all been religiously following Three Houses news. We get translated material instantly. A fair amount of us play the game with Japanese voices. We as fans, have always been used to getting our information first that way. We're hyped no matter what because it is Fire Emblem and we're invested in it.

On the other hand, casual fans don't care. And the audience that NA is trying to get at is the people where a slow hype would do nothing for them but either annoy them, or kill it. The longer your draw something out to a casual fan/someone who is new to a series, the less they care. Hype is built by silence, predictions and then a rollout of information in close quarters to a release so people are both excited and it's top of their minds.

Someone going to Gamestop after a dedicated month of info is more likely to see it and be like, "OH! NA twitter has been going crazyyy about this game, and it looked pretty cool! I watched some videos." Versus something that's been going on for months and months they'll be like, "Oh, I remember this. Huh. I'll check it out later."

All my friends who are casual fans or don't really care, are like, "Ohhh! Have you heard about the new Fire Emblem! That E3 trailer looked so cool!" Like for them, that WAS enough. They don't want weekly updates for months. 

You're conflating what YOU as a dedicated fan want, not what the general, average public (who we need to buy the game) needs.

[Hawkwing]

Glad to finally see some marketing on NOA's end, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't worried about how late they are. Awakening and Fates were partially successes because they had great marketing and got their names out there. While Shadows of Valentia's marketing didn't kick in until later, we still got some tidbits here and there about the game in the months inbetween, and even if not as huge as the previous games, it still had a modest marketing campaign (whether that was due to Echoes being a remake, a smaller project with a smaller budget, or IS learning from the backlash concerning how Fates oversold itself is up in the air).

Meanwhile, the only marketing we've gotten for Three Houses thus far outside of Japan is a few trailers and E3 gameplay videos. This is supposed to be there next big thing on the Switch, and I can't say for certain that, if I weren't a Fire Emblem fan, that this game would hook me without good word of mouth. I don't see the wisdom in only starting advertisements in the same month that a game will be released. The extremely cynical part of me is wondering if IS and Nintendo actually dislike how large the series has grown and is trying to find a subtle way to torch the franchise and run. It would most certainly explain the controversial decisions in Fire Emblem Heroes.

Anyway, onto the video itself. We learned a little about more about the characters, and it's nice to get some more voice acting. The Black Eagles Flag being based of off the Empires coat of arms is something I wouldn't have noticed othwerwise, and I like that attention to detail. I can't tell whether the Likes/Dislikes thing was tongue-in-cheek or not, since some seemed more humorous than others. Edelgard disliking "loosing control" is setting up some obvious conflict (and maybe some jokes that will be less funny down the line), Petra disliking discrimination is interesting and I hope they do something with it (and we don't get a repeat of Sully's main issue), Hubert liking coffee and irony off all things got a chuckle out of me, as did Linhardt's love of sleep and hatred of politics. Can't say I'm a fan of Petra's speech pattern at the moment, but I'll wait until we get the full game before making any judgments.

All-in-all, an okay start. At the very least, I'm interesting in seeing what the other houses hold, and how they'll talk about the characters we didn't see as well as the gameplay mechanics.

[Etrurian emperor]

3 minutes ago, Hawkwing said:

The extremely cynical part of me is wondering if IS and Nintendo actually dislike how large the series has grown and is trying to find a subtle way to torch the franchise and run. It would most certainly explain the controversial decisions in Fire Emblem Heroes.

I'd be surprised if that was the case. Companies like money and Fire Emblem Heroes is racking in quite a lot of it. And Fates and Awakening where quite successful as well. 

I wouldn't trust any company do care about their IP's beyond their monetary value but I do trust that Nintendo is arrogant enough to be proud of the things they make. Their IP's are their babies and its unlike them to sabotage their babies without due cause. That's not to say they don't sabotage their IP's every now and then but there's often a reason for it, a bad reason but a reason all the same. But if they sabotage Fire Emblem they'd just throw away a money source without a good reason or alternative. I trust Nintendo is both money loving and arrogant enough not to do that. 

[Ranulfo]

4 hours ago, EdelgardHresvelgTargaryen said:

And So was born Edelgard von Hresvelg Targaryen 

Lady of Dragonstone

The Unburnt

Khaleesi

Protector of the Adrestian Empire

The Princess That was Promised

The Dragon Queen 

The Crimson Queen

Edelgard Stormborn

The Queen Across the Land

Crimson Lady

Dragonmother

Lol

She is my Q U E E N!

[Rakath]

The Three Houses publicity/hype started pretty much immediately after the release of Mario Maker 2. FEH has a major marketshare but I doubt Nintendo feels it'll have the absolute impact that PokeGo to Let's Go would manage. And Western Audiences don't have the love of FE that exists in parts of Japan. (Smash fans being mad about Swordboys not entirely unrelated, but also not the primary point. FE just isn't Zelda/Metroid/Mario). This promotional timetable is honestly nothing to write home about, strictly medium. Totally fine.

As to the comparisons between Edelgard and Dany, that feels entirely driven by the fact that they're both girls and nothing to do with Dany's (attempted) character arc or what we know about Edelgard's arc as of now.

Edit: FE is considered a major Nintendo franchise now, however not every franchise has the same level of value in each market. FE has a higher value in Japan than it does in the states. Similarly Metroid is a much bigger title in the US. Bayo 3 will probably get more push in EU than NA, etc.

Edited July 3, 2019 by Rakath
Extra thoughts, not worth its own post.

[luchinania]

People always go on about Awakenings marketing, but the only major things I remember was the cross promotion with SMTIV, Canada breaking street day a week before, and everyone complaining about the shortage and not getting their preorders on time. Also, fans worrying about the game not being localized since it wasn’t announced at E3 and Reggie letting it slip that yes it was coming to a random reporter. I’m not quite sure what fans consider good marketing.

[Timlugia]

54 minutes ago, Hawkwing said:

The extremely cynical part of me is wondering if IS and Nintendo actually dislike how large the series has grown and is trying to find a subtle way to torch the franchise and run. It would most certainly explain the controversial decisions in Fire Emblem Heroes.

If anything, it seems to me that Three Houses is extremely well received actually outside FE fans currently since E3. Many comments across the forums wrote this would be their first FE games.

[Florete]

9 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

Are you able to defend this position? The NA website is an absolute joke compared to the Japanese one. It offers little more to English speaking fans than "The game exists! Buy it!"

We had an E3 reveal trailer, a Direct with a large focus on the game (and even named the game in the direct announcement), a second E3 trailer with major story implications, a 30-minute treehouse gameplay segment, and multiple other press and online personalities have gotten to play the game and share opinions, opinions of which have been almost universally positive. This was all before the game was even 30 days away from launch, at which point we could naturally expect more promotion.

This is similar to what most Nintendo games that aren't Smash, Mario, or Zelda get and way better than some translated character bios on Twitter could ever hope to be.

9 hours ago, Cysx said:

I'm not going to lie, I don't understand why you're doing this.

I have literally heard people call doomsday for the series over apparent "bad marketing" of this game. Most reactions are a little less extreme, but ever since the series almost died people get paranoid over every little thing that doesn't look completely perfect and unless NoA is literally shoving the game down our throats it's apparently been "bad marketing."

[Timlugia]

15 hours ago, Dorothea Joestar Arnold said:

Oh yeah crazy stuff like that is always something to look out for!

Also, since we are getting FE16 contents in FEH, it's likely we will get info from datamining there, including VA for three lords (assuming they are part of next banner)

Byleth FEH news post states file preload will occur early July, so anytime now we could get some info dump on us from FEH.

[Hawkwing]

2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I'd be surprised if that was the case. Companies like money and Fire Emblem Heroes is racking in quite a lot of it. And Fates and Awakening where quite successful as well. 

I wouldn't trust any company do care about their IP's beyond their monetary value but I do trust that Nintendo is arrogant enough to be proud of the things they make. Their IP's are their babies and its unlike them to sabotage their babies without due cause. That's not to say they don't sabotage their IP's every now and then but there's often a reason for it, a bad reason but a reason all the same. But if they sabotage Fire Emblem they'd just throw away a money source without a good reason or alternative. I trust Nintendo is both money loving and arrogant enough not to do that. 

1 hour ago, Timlugia said:

If anything, it seems to me that Three Houses is extremely well received actually outside FE fans currently since E3. Many comments across the forums wrote this would be their first FE games.

"Torch and run" may have been too extreme, but I do cynically wonder if Nintendo and IS are tired of being yelled at by the fandom (with ranging degrees of justification), while also not wanting to part the revenue, so they're finding ways to lower it's popularity without destroying it. Granted, I'm not in charge of something that's made millions of dollars yet has a divisive reception, so I don't know what people in that situation are thinking. My original comment may have just been an idle thought I've been having for a while.

Thinking about it some more, though, I'm wondering if IS and Nintendo are a bit too reliant on Fire Emblem selling through brand name alone. I know that the series has always been popular in Japan, but elsewhere it really only became well-known because of Smash Bros and Awakening, and every game released since has been divisive in its own way. It doesn't help that Nintendo hasn't made accessing the previous games any easier (not everyone has a Wii U, people like me missed the Ambassador program on the 3DS and I am still pissed about that because I had my 3DS since 2011, and its still working just fine, and emulators are a grey area that not everyone wants to deal with).

Maybe I'm just misremembering Echoes marketing (and/or comparing two dissimilar things), but I do recall that we got more information about that game a few months before it released than we have for Three Houses at the moment. The E3 trailers and the earlier Direct have done a lot, but there are still several details that we don't know in the west that things like Famistu have covered, and I wonder what kind of effect that will have.

[Rakath]

1 hour ago, Hawkwing said:

Maybe I'm just misremembering Echoes marketing (and/or comparing two dissimilar things), but I do recall that we got more information about that game a few months before it released than we have for Three Houses at the moment. The E3 trailers and the earlier Direct have done a lot, but there are still several details that we don't know in the west that things like Famistu have covered, and I wonder what kind of effect that will have.

Echoes was released in April/May 2017, after an announcement in January that year. There wasn't a lot going on in that quarter? Nintendo's big push at the time was the Switch release, so their releases on the 3DS were light at the time (From Nintendo it was Bye-bye Boxboy and Poochy and Yoshi's Wooly World). They dropped a lot of Echoes info rather fast, but it's also a remake without any big hype cycle to come out.

It was very different compared to how Fates and Awakening were handled, as those were new titles that were given a longer cycle.

(I do not know what the Japanese hype cycle was for any of the titles, but the announce to release was the same as the US.)

[Timlugia]

I remember that resouces allocated for FE were pretty "spread out" early 2017 because 4 FE titles being announced at once (FEH, FE15, FEW, FE16), plus the main focus was on impending Switch and Zelda release just a month after.

[luchinania]

 

That’s kinda neat; I wish they would do that with the other non-lords.

[NekoKnight]

6 hours ago, Kiran_ said:

On the other hand, casual fans don't care. And the audience that NA is trying to get at is the people where a slow hype would do nothing for them but either annoy them, or kill it. The longer your draw something out to a casual fan/someone who is new to a series, the less they care. Hype is built by silence, predictions and then a rollout of information in close quarters to a release so people are both excited and it's top of their minds.

Someone going to Gamestop after a dedicated month of info is more likely to see it and be like, "OH! NA twitter has been going crazyyy about this game, and it looked pretty cool! I watched some videos." Versus something that's been going on for months and months they'll be like, "Oh, I remember this. Huh. I'll check it out later."

All my friends who are casual fans or don't really care, are like, "Ohhh! Have you heard about the new Fire Emblem! That E3 trailer looked so cool!" Like for them, that WAS enough. They don't want weekly updates for months. 

There is a whole lot of conjecture here based on your limited anecdotal evidence. What makes you think people aren't interested in regular updates? You think less is more? Could it be that more is more? You can have both gradual promotion and then a huge final push in the month leading up to release.

Quote

Hype is built by silence

Yikes, no. Silence is the slow death of hype. When you don't get more info on something, it becomes "out of sight, out of mind". I'm a casual fan of a number of Nintendo IPs and I forget they exist if they don't actually promote the games.

4 hours ago, Florete said:

We had an E3 reveal trailer, a Direct with a large focus on the game (and even named the game in the direct announcement), a second E3 trailer with major story implications, a 30-minute treehouse gameplay segment, and multiple other press and online personalities have gotten to play the game and share opinions, opinions of which have been almost universally positive. This was all before the game was even 30 days away from launch, at which point we could naturally expect more promotion.

This is similar to what most Nintendo games that aren't Smash, Mario, or Zelda get and way better than some translated character bios on Twitter could ever hope to be.

Let me cut you off by stating that the original point was that the marketing was poor pre-E3 2019. So everything you listed after that point on the timeline is irrelevant. It's not being contested. Japan has gotten pretty much everything we did AND MORE. It's no contest. Their website, which I would assume is a place casual fans would want to check out if they googled the name of the game, is regularly updated with lots of juicy information. What does our website have (even now)? Tumbleweeds and the sound of the wind blowing.

I've seen you post on more than one occasion things to the effect of "ToLd YoU sO" when your argument rests on things that happened mostly after E3 2019, a period no one disagrees with having adequate marketing.

Edited July 3, 2019 by NekoKnight

[Florete]

26 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

Let me cut you off by stating that the original point was that the marketing was poor pre-E3 2019. So everything you listed after that point on the timeline is irrelevant. It's not being contested. Japan has gotten pretty much everything we did AND MORE. It's no contest. Their website, which I would assume is a place casual fans would want to check out if they googled the name of the game, is regularly updated with lots of juicy information. What does our website have (even now)? Tumbleweeds and the sound of the wind blowing.

I've seen you post on more than one occasion things to the effect of "ToLd YoU sO" when your argument rests on things that happened mostly after E3 2019, a period no one disagrees with having adequate marketing.

Prior to now, you never said anything about E3. I've never heard anyone specify, "It was only bad pre-E3" until you just now. But even then, when you consider how far away from release the game was, it wasn't really bad. It couldn't really be bad yet. Just because NoJ published bios on Twitter and had Famitsu articles doesn't mean the marketing for the rest of the world was awful, NoJ just chose to push it further out. Also, people will say stuff like, "Unless you were following FE news sites you didn't know about any of this info from Japan," but a lot of that info was from the Fire Emblem Twitter, which I would guess is largely followed by people who are already interested in the series. So unless someone was following Famitsu, non-FE fans even in Japan probably didn't see much pre-E3.

NoA promoted this game just like almost any other release. They just didn't shove it down our throats months ahead of release. Just because it wasn't promoted the same way in the west as it was in Japan doesn't mean it was ever bad.

[Rose482]

41 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

Japan has gotten pretty much everything we did AND MORE

While this is indeed the case here, but we also need to ask ourselves something....does the extra stuff that Japan got matter? Of course some of it does, but I feel like some of it are just things that are very extra and most people would be fine with not knowing about it anyway.

Like I don't think a casual fan would really care about each student's bio and simple things like that in all honestly, if anything the first thing they would look up is the game-play. Even with the least amount of looking around, it would be easy to know that FE16 would have: An avatar/A time jump/ and it takes place in a academy, which are all things that I think would hype the casual player. 

Edited July 3, 2019 by Rose482

[BZL8]

1 hour ago, NekoKnight said:

There is a whole lot of conjecture here based on your limited anecdotal evidence. What makes you think people aren't interested in regular updates? You think less is more? Could it be that more is more? You can have both gradual promotion and then a huge final push in the month leading up to release.

Yikes, no. Silence is the slow death of hype. When you don't get more info on something, it becomes "out of sight, out of mind". I'm a casual fan of a number of Nintendo IPs and I forget they exist if they don't actually promote the games.

Let me cut you off by stating that the original point was that the marketing was poor pre-E3 2019. So everything you listed after that point on the timeline is irrelevant. It's not being contested. Japan has gotten pretty much everything we did AND MORE. It's no contest. Their website, which I would assume is a place casual fans would want to check out if they googled the name of the game, is regularly updated with lots of juicy information. What does our website have (even now)? Tumbleweeds and the sound of the wind blowing.

I've seen you post on more than one occasion things to the effect of "ToLd YoU sO" when your argument rests on things that happened mostly after E3 2019, a period no one disagrees with having adequate marketing.

By your logic, Persona 5 has poor marketing overseas because overseas casual fans didn't get much mileage and info from Atlus USA's overseas marketing and website compared to Atlus Japan's. Is that what I am getting at? I mean sometimes the Japanese side of marketing, whether wittingly or not, does the job already for overseas. 

[Kiran_]

1 hour ago, NekoKnight said:

There is a whole lot of conjecture here based on your limited anecdotal evidence. What makes you think people aren't interested in regular updates? You think less is more? Could it be that more is more? You can have both gradual promotion and then a huge final push in the month leading up to release.

Yikes, no. Silence is the slow death of hype. When you don't get more info on something, it becomes "out of sight, out of mind". I'm a casual fan of a number of Nintendo IPs and I forget they exist if they don't actually promote the games.

Considering it's my actual job, it's not "limited" evidence. We have plenty of studies that prove what works best in advertising. Less is more. A lot of people are NOT interested in regular small updates. Attention for the average consumer drops off. You can do a gradual promotion, but there is such a thing as too much info. I get you might be different. And same goes for me. But you can't put what you would want on everyone else.

Absolute silence is a death. But just silence? Not at all. They are promoting the games. Just not on the timeline you want. And not the way you want it. But doesn't make it less effective. If you're such a casual fan of some games, what does it matter if they wait to promote until the last month or so before a game? They're still giving all the information, just condensed and so it's top of mind when you wind up at a store and see it. Nobody is saying that NO marketing is good. Just that a different timeline is fine.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Kiran_

[NekoKnight]

1 hour ago, Florete said:

Prior to now, you never said anything about E3. I've never heard anyone specify, "It was only bad pre-E3" until you just now. But even then, when you consider how far away from release the game was, it wasn't really bad. It couldn't really be bad yet. Just because NoJ published bios on Twitter and had Famitsu articles doesn't mean the marketing for the rest of the world was awful, NoJ just chose to push it further out. Also, people will say stuff like, "Unless you were following FE news sites you didn't know about any of this info from Japan," but a lot of that info was from the Fire Emblem Twitter, which I would guess is largely followed by people who are already interested in the series. So unless someone was following Famitsu, non-FE fans even in Japan probably didn't see much pre-E3. 



You quoted two posts in the last 24 hours that said "the marketing has been poor until now/recently". That's what the conversation has always been about. E3 2019 is when things finally kicked into gear.

All of the Twitter stuff is posted to the website so it's still very accessible. I'm glad you feel vindicated for predicting that there would be heavier marketing later but maybe you can respect people for being concerned about the series instead of mocking them for their lack of faith in the marketing. Many of us didn't want to have a repeat of SoV's middling reception, which I'd blame at least in part on lackluster marketing. I want TH to be the face of FE now (assuming it's good), not Awakening and Fates.

25 minutes ago, BZL8 said:

I mean sometimes the Japanese side of marketing, whether wittingly or not, does the job already for overseas. 

I'm glad they're pulling their weight and then some, lol.

--------

(Tagged you at the bottom since editing on mobile is a bitch)

As a person in marketing, I'm curious to know why  you think the Japanese management of hype building is different from NoA. Why do they bother with the gradual flow of news if you say that's actually detrimental to getting people interested in the game? It's a different country and group of fans, sure, but there must be some basic elements of consumer behavior that are universal.

@Kiran_

Edited July 4, 2019 by NekoKnight

[Kiran_]

10 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

As a person in marketing, I'm curious to know why  you think the Japanese management of hype building is different from NoA. Why do they bother with the gradual flow of news if you say that's actually detrimental to getting people interested in the game? It's a different country and group of fans, sure, but there must be some basic elements of consumer behavior that are universal.

@Kiran_

Sadly very little is universal when it comes to advertising. We have to always totally change our marketing based on the vast differences in culture. Americans, stereotype or not, don't retain or engage with content as much, idk why. And different mediums have different interaction times. I can speak most to NoA, because that's what I generally do. But the few times I've done it for global markets, even hyping up something as simple as a new promotion tend to go differently. Same assets (aside from like language). Different launch times.

I also personally have never done video games, so I can't speak to the more nuanced details of that market. But I've done other entertainment and I can't imagine in being too different at the end. America likes instant gratification. So hype is best done when something is close to release. Look at how music artists tease their new work within a small time frame of it being released. 

 

[NekoKnight]

2 minutes ago, Kiran_ said:

Sadly very little is universal when it comes to advertising. We have to always totally change our marketing based on the vast differences in culture. Americans, stereotype or not, don't retain or engage with content as much, idk why. And different mediums have different interaction times. I can speak most to NoA, because that's what I generally do. But the few times I've done it for global markets, even hyping up something as simple as a new promotion tend to go differently. Same assets (aside from like language). Different launch times.

I also personally have never done video games, so I can't speak to the more nuanced details of that market. But I've done other entertainment and I can't imagine in being too different at the end. America likes instant gratification. So hype is best done when something is close to release. Look at how music artists tease their new work within a small time frame of it being released.  

I see. Thank you for your insight on the matter.

I can't claim to be an expert on consumer behavior for Japan either but considering we're having a global release, I had hoped that NA would keep in stride with the amount of material Japan is releasing. There is a LOT of information that is still Japan exclusive and I wish NoA shared more.

[Timlugia]

I don't know if there is any evidence supporting it (I assume marking research do, and Nintendo has very large marketing teams), but I feel that Youtube has generally replaced official website for information in the past decades. Maybe that's why NoA put more effort on streamers rather than the websites. Just like how Smash Ultimate website was very minimum compared to Brawl in 2008.

[Cysx]

9 hours ago, Rose482 said:

While this is indeed the case here, but we also need to ask ourselves something....does the extra stuff that Japan got matter? Of course some of it does, but I feel like some of it are just things that are very extra and most people would be fine with not knowing about it anyway.

I'd say that's a bit of a biased perspective here; remember that almost all of the Three Houses content on this site as well as >90% of discussion come from japanese reveals, that have been translated by fans. It's not just twitter bios, if you were exclusively looking at US marketing, before influencers started entering the picture you'd have known almost nothing specific about the game; you wouldn't know about classes, gambits, crests, no weapon triangle, how skills work, how any of the monastery functions (including menial tasks or more important concepts such as venture gauge) the calendar would still be unexplained with the structure of one chapter/month, etc, etc. These are not just tidbits, these are the game. Compare to how deep they went in with Xenoblade 2's combat system and how that paid off for them.

7 hours ago, Kiran_ said:

Sadly very little is universal when it comes to advertising. We have to always totally change our marketing based on the vast differences in culture. Americans, stereotype or not, don't retain or engage with content as much, idk why. And different mediums have different interaction times. I can speak most to NoA, because that's what I generally do. But the few times I've done it for global markets, even hyping up something as simple as a new promotion tend to go differently. Same assets (aside from like language). Different launch times.

I also personally have never done video games, so I can't speak to the more nuanced details of that market. But I've done other entertainment and I can't imagine in being too different at the end. America likes instant gratification. So hype is best done when something is close to release. Look at how music artists tease their new work within a small time frame of it being released. 

 

That's really interesting, I was wondering if something like that was at play. Thanks for sharing. I still don't think they're appropriately understanding how the internet works on this one, since people sharing information in japanese for months gives them a very bad look; you may say that doesn't affect the average Joe, but I wonder. And there's still no excuse for the website, but we'll see how things go from here I guess.