digging the localization roster lately.

[bartre]

I say this mostly as more and more japanese-y games are coming to the west as of late.
example:
http://www.siliconera.com/2013/09/19/jojos-bizarre-adventure-all-star-battle-is-coming-to-the-west-next-year/

couple that with games like hakuoki and sweet fuse on the PSP, hatsune miku on PS3, death smiles and otomedius on 360, and it just seems like more companies are willing to take a chance on localizing games that just wouldn't have got a second look a few generations back.

is there a particular reason?
is it getting easier to translate games? less costly? or are they simply taking a chance since gaming has gotten more mainstream over the last decade or so

[Tatsujin]

weaboos are in superior numbers now compared to the past -> huge market.

[DragonmasterDan]

Times have changed and far more often than in the past Japanese developers are making things easier to get games ported. That's things like easy systems to insert new text into the game code, keeping their source code properly backed up (a common problem in generations past was lost source code) and a general more global market themed mentality. In a lot of cases Japanese developers have someone who writes up basic notes for what would need to be translated into English so that if a publisher is interested in releasing it overseas, they already have a decent idea of what kind of effort this would require. Now, this isn't always the case, there's still companies hard coding Japanese text into games and losing source code. But this situation has improved drastically in recent years.