In an interview with Eurogamer, Pokemon Game Director Junichi Masuda explains why the new versions are released to the rest of world months after the Japan release. Pokemon Black and White were released in Japan on Sept. 18 while the rest of the world won’t see it until early March (or April for South Korea).

“The gap between the Japanese launch and the European launch is because we always try to make the best videogame experience for not only Japanese users, but the people in other countries who enjoy localised videogames,” game director Junichi Masuda told Eurogamer in a new interview.

“For example, we take care with the Pokemon names. We can all adapt Japanese names to Europe, but then sometimes it wouldn’t mean anything to the European kids and players. So we always take all the processes seriously when we localise.”

“For Black and White we totally changed the scheme of the organisation,” Masuda revealed. “This time we translated directly from Japanese to all other languages. Before, we localised from Japanese to English, and from English to other European languages. So this time it was Japanese directly to European languages.

“That made the launch timing a little closer to the Japanese launch. This time, the launch in Europe is 4th March, which is two days before the US launch. So we’re making an effort. This time we had many new localisation staff.”

 
Source: Eurogamer