which is
I think this is the issue SEGA has had for awhile, management in the West not believing that Japanese games can sell. This game has obviously been in development longer than Satomi had his 'SEGA Games co' power. Its probably part of his 'you have to work with people to get shit down' and sadly that just how this business works.
It looked like (from a outside perspective) that SEGA Japan worked hard to get Hatsune Miku games overseas, almost like they saw the demand for them and SOA didn't. They had play tests in places for the Japanese version, they released that iphone app themselves, then they had the Japanese version of the PSP (or vita?) game at Sony's booth one year.... then the next year they brought it over finally.
Which is stupid to be quite honest, if Western management actually took a good look at the success Atlus has had with these types of games (even if handicapped by the fact that most Japanese games cater to a certain audience these days), they can a way to sell Japanese titles.
I think after 2 major failures and the recent restructuring, SoA would be wise to maybe try and work on bringing over more Japanese titles and leave the majority of original content development to SoE (apart from acquiring studios like Relic and Three Rings?).
I think the insult is someone at SEGA thought that Puyo Puyo had no appeal, that they had to go and pay artist/developers to change the damn game instead of giving the in-house brand a chance...
I think someone at SEGA America did a lot of focus testing and found out people found this more appealing in their testing group than Puyo Puyo. This is the same method for Sonic being slower in Sonic Boom's games... (focus testing)
I think slowing down Sonic to a certain degree is detrimental to the idea behind the character, sure you have the opposite end of having an uncontrollable blue rocket but it's better to find a middle ground. That being said, I think of focus testing as double edge sword at times, other times more harm than good, and at certain times pretty goddamn stupid.
I can't recall many cases where it is actually effect and not a waste of people's time and money.
