Ace Attorney Hostage Crisis

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - HOLD IT!

As RawkHawk2010 laments, I'm very predisposed to defending Capcom at every turn for the various decisions that they make. As I wrote earlier, I refuse to boycott Capcom because I'm a loyal Ace Attorney fan. Rawk is indignant on Capcom's practice to hold games hostage to get consumers to buy other games, but I think this practice makes perfectly logical business sense.

Siliconera reports that Capcom USA's Senior VP, Christian Svensson, says that he and Capcom are putting a lot of faith into the Ace Attorney community to buy Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. We have to meet Capcom's sales targets! So I'll do my part, too, and write this and future articles on this series!

Not that I'm willing to do this for just anyone, but right now I'm working out a deal with Rawk where I gift him Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on WiiWare and he'll gift me Earthbound on the Wii U's Virtual Console whenever it is released in America (and whenever gifting functionality is enabled on the Wii U). That way, even a cold-hearted Capcom-boycotting fiend like Rawk can experience the scrumptiousness of Ace Attorney!

And if Dual Destinies sells, then we can get Ace Attorney Investigations 2 in America! Oh, how sweet that would be! The first game in that spin-off series apparently did poorly, but Capcom is willing to give us another chance!

Capcom's justification for a digital download-only release is absolutely valid and makes perfect business sense. Not only are they relying on the Ace Attorney fan base, but they're relying on Nintendo of America and the Nintendo eShop service to carry them through. We should feel HONOURED that Capcom is bothering to grace Nintendo systems once more with Ace Attorney goodness as opposed to going straight to disgusting things like making it an iPhone app. They could be joining bastards like EA, but they still believe in us.

Oh, and just as a counterpoint to Rawk's article (which I linked above — even if it's a stupid article, I still want KoopaTV to amass more page views, so check it out!), Capcom gave the Phoenix Wright license to Level-5 for Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney, which is NOT being held hostage and will in fact be coming out sometime this year in America. That's the schedule, anyway. I don't know if sales of that will help out the cause for just the Ace Attorney side, but I don't see how it can hurt. Capcom certainly isn't stopping anyone from releasing that here or anywhere, and they should be having half (or 49%) of the control over this game, unlike if Mega Man was in Super Smash Bros. 4 where Capcom would get less than 1%, or whatever.

There is a Japanese Nintendo Direct for Ace Attorney 5 tomorrow at 7 AM Eastern time. Here's the link. I won't be able to watch it live, unfortunately.

EDIT: Actually yeah I can watch it live.

Ludwig is realizing that there might never be an Ace Attorney community on Miiverse unless Capcom does what they did with the first three games and put them up as WiiWare. In that case, comment here and future articles if you want to talk to him about Ace Attorney! If you do want to follow him on Miiverse, his Nintendo Network ID is PrinceOfKoopas.


Turns out that such a Miiverse community does exist, as referenced here.
Ludwig admits he was wrong about relying on Nintendo here.
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney didn't come anywhere close to releasing in 2013 in America.