What's stopping Dragon Ball Heroes from coming to the West?

[JohnnyCashKami]

It's currently exclusive to Japan only but it's not as if it couldn't also be available in Western countries too. BANDAI Namco Entertainment as a business is to make money and so they're missing out by not bringing DB Heroes to the West.

This would also allow Super Dragon Ball Heroes to have official releases dubbed/subbed in English, Catalan, Portuguese, Castilian, Galician, French, German, Italian, Greek, Russian, Swedish and so on.

[Doctor.]

Arcades have pretty much died out already.

[Chuquita]

The only arcades I ever see are the ones in various shore towns on the boardwalks. I played Mario Kart DX at a boardwalk arcade this past summer; had a lot of fun with it since there's levels and characters available in that version only. There's also places like Dave and Busters along with Chuck E Cheese that are arcade-restaurant fusions, but I don't know how popular or widespread either of those restaurants currently are.

My thought for how you would bring DBH to the West in lieu of arcades would be to instead bring it to Steam/PS4/XBOX as an online game and change the way the cards are processed by the game so that they're instead read via either some tie-in phone app OR a specialized peripheral even though the latter may cost more money than it'd be worth to make depending on how popular it could conceivably get.

[TheNamekGio]

Arcades have pretty much died out already.

Maybe in your country. I live in a major city. We have arcade areas still. Dave and Buster's, Main Event,Laser Tag Arcades. Some of our many malls also have arcades. I don't know why people keep saying arcades are dead. I mean if you live in a small crappy town then yea maybe they are. I live in one of the top 5 major cities and arcades are still around just not on every block like back in the 90s.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

I'm pretty sure DBS Card game is the equivalent, setting up an international card game without arcade machines seems much easier to do.

[Doctor.]

Arcades have pretty much died out already.

Maybe in your country. I live in a major city. We have arcade areas still. Dave and Buster's, Main Event,Laser Tag Arcades. Some of our many malls also have arcades. I don't know why people keep saying arcades are dead. I mean if you live in a small crappy town then yea maybe they are. I live in one of the top 5 major cities and arcades are still around just not on every block like back in the 90s.

Maybe in the US they're still around like zombies, but I haven't seen any in Europe.

[Cipher]

Complete absence of the kind of active arcade scene that have allowed kid-oriented card+arcade cabinet ventures to work in Japan. The venues just aren't there.

I do think it's kind of baffling Viz hasn't at least taken a spin on the DB Heroes manga(s) yet though, as even removed from the product, those should do numbers--I suspect more than a lot of their titles that don't have Dragon Ball in the name.

EDIT -- And guys, we're not talking about one or two niche arcades in an entire metropolitan area (those that even have them), or adult-oriented locations. Something like Heroes (and it's not alone; there are other entries card+arcade game genre in Japan) needs widespread distribution of the cabinets, in places children can easily visit, or the whole thing just doesn't work. It's hard to sell cards and new campaign updates around machines most of the target audience just can't get to.

[JohnnyCashKami]

Arcades have pretty much died out already.

I wasn't actually focusing on that but the 3DS Heroes games that BANDAI Namco Entertainment has been releasing which everyone can play at home. Admittedly, arcades in Western countries aren't what they once were but they're still around and fun to play.

I'm pretty sure DBS Card game is the equivalent, setting up an international card game without arcade machines seems much easier to do.

Card games are very popular in the West too so that's something they could make it work as well.

Maybe in the US they're still around like zombies, but I haven't seen any in Europe.

Europe is a continent so you're seriously telling me you've been to every single country and every city and village in the continent and know exactly that it doesn't have any arcades left kickin'? That made me chuckle, bud. Portugal barely has any video game stores around (it has CeX, GAME and some independent stores, I think) which I know for a fact but don't assume the rest of the countries in the continent are the same way. Portugal is a dried out country (pains me to say it) where games aren't really something retailers care about nor its people. Maybe FNAC and Worten but the Worten stores I've visited hardly had any games and they were overpriced as hell.

Even Blu-rays aren't really sold in that many stores, heck, even DVDs are more popular (they're cheaper and pretty much everyone has a DVD player in some form). I do remember that in Coina (Barreiro, Lisbon) there was a small arcade room but think that went bust as some other store replaced it.

Saying "I haven't seen any in Europe." is the same as "I haven't seen any in Africa/Americas/Asia." just as ridiculous. That would claim you'd have visited every country in said continent.

[Doctor.]

Arcades have pretty much died out already.

I wasn't actually focusing on that but the 3DS Heroes games that BANDAI Namco Entertainment has been releasing which everyone can play at home. Admittedly, arcades in Western countries aren't what they once were but they're still around and fun to play.

I'm pretty sure DBS Card game is the equivalent, setting up an international card game without arcade machines seems much easier to do.

Card games are very popular in the West too so that's something they could make it work as well.

Maybe in the US they're still around like zombies, but I haven't seen any in Europe.

Europe is a continent so you're seriously telling me you've been to every single country and every city and village in the continent and know exactly that it doesn't have any arcades left kickin'? That made me chuckle, bud. Portugal barely has any video game stores around (it has CeX, GAME and some independent stores, I think) which I know for a fact but don't assume the rest of the countries in the continent are the same way. Portugal is a dried out country (pains me to say it) where games aren't really something retailers care about nor its people. Maybe FNAC and Worten but the Worten stores I've visited hardly had any games and they were overpriced as hell.

Even Blu-rays aren't really sold in that many stores, heck, even DVDs are more popular (they're cheaper and pretty much everyone has a DVD player in some form). I do remember that in Coina (Barreiro, Lisbon) there was a small arcade room but think that went bust as some other store replaced it.

Saying "I haven't seen any in Europe." is the same as "I haven't seen any in Africa/Americas/Asia." just as ridiculous. That would claim you'd have visited every country in said continent.

No, it would just mean you know what trends are like in a fairly homogeneous continent and you're sufficiently well-traveled. And the sentence "I haven't seen any" implies anecdotal evidence.

[Super Sayian Prime]

Ignoring the whole arcade aspect, at this point there's nearly a decade worth of material they'd have to get through ...