FE did fine after coming to North America, at least right away. It should probably have come over earlier than 2003 though. And I question what they're doing by not bringing Shadow Dragon's sequel over here...
Christ! Does anyone on this board have a fucking shred of patience? Localizations do not happen over night, especially with RPGs with their walls-o-text to both translate and localize. The game came out less than four months ago. At least give localizations a year to come out.
It's not about 'fucking shreds of patience.' You said so yourself: it's been out in Japan for a while. It's Nintendo's IP. They're big, and we'd have at least heard an announcement by now, believe me. We have not.
The same goes for Xenoblade.
A year is not the norm unless the companies are relatively small, like localizations of Idea Factory titles.