Eurogamer Strikes Out

22 Jun / by: M&R / 26 comments /

A few weeks ago, Eurogamer.net posted this article concerning N+.

Unfortunately it contained not one, not two, but three factual errors. Actually, it’s more like 3.5.. but that would ruin the baseball metaphor so we’ll round down.

Just to clear things up:

The ninja’s name IS NOT “N”!

The article refers to “a ninja called N”, which is patently false: the ninja has no name. From the in-game story (which apparently nobody reads):

“N, ‘the way of the ninja,’ is a highly advanced system of spiritual, cognitive, and physical training. It emphasizes pacifism, humility, and the need to traverse a series of 5 rooms before the end of your lifetime, a feat known only as “beating an episode””

The ninja would prefer to remain anonymous at this time.

The ninja’s gender IS NOT “MALE”!

The article goes on to refer to the ninja using the masculine pronoun “his”, which is again sadly incorrect since the ninja is decidedly non-gender-specific. We’re not sure how people get the idea that the ninja is male.. or even human for that matter — have you seen the head on that thing?!

The ninja would prefer to remain gender-neutral.

The handheld version of N+ IS NOT “U.S.-ONLY”!

We’re happy to announce that N+ will indeed be released in Europe. Hooray!! We’re not sure what the translated title will be — we kid, obviously it’ll be “Royale with Cheese”.

Also, that last error is going to cost Eurogamer an extra 50% wrong, since not only did they mistakenly claim N+ would be US-only, but (to add insult to other insult) they rather tactlessly totally ignored Canada!

If N+ were not coming to Europe (which it’s not.. it is very definitely not not coming to Europe, just to make things perfectly clear), it would still be released in North America — the majority of which is Canada!

We might only have 10% the population of the USA, but you’d better believe we’ve got 103% of the land mass. Booyah!

Better luck next time, Eurogamer.

comments ( 26 )

  • It’s just easier to call the ninja ‘n’.

    After reading a bit of both your writing styles, I’m going to guess this is written by Mare. Am I right?

  • I read the summary…

  • Ahahahahahaha…that’s hilarious.

    Anyway, you should see how many times we have to bring up that point of ‘N’ not being the ninja’s name back on the forums. Good to know that N+ is going to Europe as well, that’ll make a lot of people happy.

  • actually, we both write these things together — we pass them back and forth until we’re both happy.

    we know how often people tend to make these mistakes, so we figured that if we made a nice official statement it might help things πŸ˜‰

  • When I wrote my fan fic a while back I had grand illusions of the name I gave the ninja would stick… alas.

    great read!

  • Canadi-pned. :p πŸ™‚

  • I prefer to name the ninjas myself.

  • They got their info from YOUR Publisher.

    Why don’t you have a go at them? πŸ˜‰

  • […] Eurogamer Strikes Out [Metanet, thanks Raigan!] […]

  • @ Ranzibar: They got their info from our publisher’s press release:

    http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=25511

    Where in that text does it say it’ll be US-only?

  • Where in the text does it say it’ll be coming to Europe? Infact, they’ve yet to officially announce it, still. Maybe you can make sure your Publisher gives out the complete information that you want them to give out next time? πŸ˜‰

  • And not to nitpick, but the N page says ‘dude’. That could do with a change to eliminate any words that can be attributed to one gender or the other.

  • That should teach those canadians. Your website failed to give Resident Evil a sane score though.com Bloody reporters πŸ˜‰

  • Bloody Wii for adding .com after every..com

  • […] MetaNet Kategorien: PSP […]

  • That’s the whole point though, Atari released what they were able to release at the time. At the time, they hadn’t confirmed any locations or dates (they were still in the process of doing so), so they didn’t put anything about that in the press release. It’s certainly not Atari’s fault that people then made up information and published it as true without checking the facts.

    Also, dude, it might be true that that word originated with reference to the male gender, but it has since evolved to encompass either. So it’s not a gender-specific word. πŸ˜‰

  • Unless we get told specifically that a product is a EU target, then past experience will tell us it ain’t coming. This was a press release from America. 99.9% of the time, a press release is generally relevant to the country in which the press release is taking place in. Usually when games are announced coming to Europe, the release is from Europe.

    Someone sees ‘dude’ the immediate implication is, guy, male. Best to scratch if off before new players assume as such. I’m sure you’ll clarify everything in the manual though, right? πŸ™‚

  • Hmm.

    From admin of metanet

    “It’s certainly not Atari’s fault that people then made up information and published it as true without checking the facts.”

    From Eurogamer:

    “Pending news from the publisher’s superoffice in Lyon, France, a UK representative could only repeat that the publisher has yet to confirm a European release.”

    Seems, methinks, that they DID check the facts. Mind you, can’t let that get in the way of a good rant, no sir…

  • well, we had to wait a couple weeks to finally get an official verdict from Atari NY.. maybe they haven’t been told over in France?

  • Fair enough.

    But that still means that when Eurogamer checked on the ‘facts’, they were confirmed back to them. Which they ran with (or rather, GI.biz did), making it look as though the fault really lies with Atari’s crappy press release and internal communications system…

  • I just don’t see how they jumped from “we don’t know if or when it’s coming” to “it’s not coming”.. I guess “this just in: N+ may or may not be coming to Europe, and if so we don’t know when” wasn’t a catchy headline? Why even bother to say anything?

    If last year I had phoned up Blizzard and asked if they were working on Starcraft 2, and they had said “we can’t confirm that”, I wouldn’t immediately print an article about how Starcraft 2 wasn’t going to be made.

    Anyway, our experience has been that most games are localized for both English and FIGS (i.e Europe); certainly for XBLA we _had_ to support FIGS. All the devs we know are supporting more than just English.

    I’d wager that the _majority_ of titles that are released in North America are also released in Europe — I can’t see worldwide releases being the exception rather than the rule. There’s no way you lads really that gaming-deprived.. there would be riots!

  • Yeah. With the exception of text heavy or voiced games, you’d be business wise *insane* not to localize a game these days. Especially in small content games, it barely adds 1-3 more months of development. If your English/North American TRC was nightmarish, then I could see somebody being less than excited about localizing. But you do it, as it tends to double your market.

    I think I did read a long time ago that Microsoft was fine with a North America localization only, but I imagine few people take them up on that offer (short of the common approval of one before the other).

    And on a side note, “FIGS” is great. I always used the lame term “Big 5”, where English made it 5. It sounds like we’ve done more work that way. πŸ˜‰

  • Is this coming to Australia??
    because i will be very pissed off

  • @ Phantom: if it does, or if it doesn’t?! πŸ˜‰

  • Hear Hear! (agrees with phantom).
    Please, please, please, please, please, DONT screw Australia over, it happens all the time and we’re goddamn sick of it.

  • Oh wait. Yes, I have. I’m sorry, but I just don’t have it in me right now to type it all out again. Besides, it was just ramblings anyway. You didn’t want to hear me go on and on about this, right?

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