Lots of people commented on the Penny Arcade folks view of Mieville's work, realizing they mainly read "mainstream" sci fi novels and such, I'm guessing that his books are just not meant for them.

I don't know if I could call him fantasy, people call his books weird fiction, which I think is more suited for him.  If you want fantasy books that don't ride on Tolkien tropes I recommend GRRM A Song of Ice and Fire and Steven Erickson's Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Perdido Street station is good, but his post Bas Lag books, Unlundun, The City and The City, Kraken, Embassytown, and so far Railsea, are REALLY good.  And Embassytown(which is hardcore sci fi) is incredibly deep.

Day one(on steam that is)

I think they mean pretty boys and cute girls.  You can make a good looking hero who is "manly" and a beautiful girl who is a woman.  I guess they want that. (think characters from Berserk)

(in order)
Yakuza Dead Souls(ps3)
Tales of the Abyss(3ds)
Pandora's Tower(wii)
Skyrim(waiting for it to be cheaper on steam)
Tales of Graces(ps3)
Game of Thrones(cheaper on steam)
Persona 2 IS(PSP)
Yakuza Kenzan(ps3)
Binary Domain(cheaper on steam)

Just started reading China Mieville's latest book, "Railsea". Such an odd book, about a sea of train tracks, and people sail this "ocean" on trains hunting giant moles.  Classic Mieville :P

http://grrm.livejournal.com/279996.html?thread=15978684#t15978684 (not a spoiler)
Dunno what to think of the storyline now :-/

Preordered it for the art book(ASOIAF fanboy), I'll get to it eventually.  I hear the story is good, which is good enough for me for this game.

I don't know about the others, but for me, they owe me a promotion.  Until I get it, I ain't paying full price ever. (yes I know I'm no longer there, they still owe me one :P )

could it be NBGA is going to wait for a Xilia DC and release that in the west.  But.... that would make sense.  I wonder how long it will take for it to come out, and if anyone I know will still be there(down to three people I can comfortably ask for free/cheap games),  I still won't buy anything they make.

So who wants to place bets, what will come out first? Versus or Beyond Good and Evil 2?  I'm voting on BG&E2.

Personally I find this game shite, but you do know westerners not buying it won't be seen as a boycott in japan, they'll likely write it off as "they just want more console fpses".

Oh and either tone down or remove your sig its giving me seizure.

I am also :P

Needed since Japanese devs actually throw away their code after a game is done(a practice which I find unthinkable, thankfully they don't anymore), so they need to find other means to fix things. 

The other case is Japanese coders tend to write their code knowing its going to be thrown away leading to some true coding abominations.  Making hacking and workarounds the only way to solve some problems. 

And yeah WD had one programmer on staff, but was also a partner, and WD was different in general.

From reading in between the lines with this sad cancellation, and Dragon Crown's issues, I think Vanillaware might be struggling.  I hate to be doom and gloom but I wouldn't be surprised if they get bought out or go under after DC.

EDIT: Oh and yeah localization houses rarely higher programmers, I know WD had one and that's it.  At my old workplace localization and development had a wall between them and I can think of one case where an outsourced dev team ended their relation with the company after a japan launch but before the localization, even though the company owned the code, localization was canned.  I'm hoping this may change from one of my attempted business endeavors(everyone please keep your fingers crossed that the parties I'm talking to say yes, then I can talk more about it).