Today, I found a rather old blog post (well, old in Internet years—it was posted in October!) where a fan has translated the post-release Iwata Asks interview for Band Brothers DX.

The interview mostly talks about the unexpectedly strong response to the game's song creation feature, which lets users create songs entirely from the ground up in the game's deep music editor. Because of song licensing issues, Nintendo has a rather complicated approval process in place that requires submitters to add a JASRAC code indicating what song their submission is an arrangement of, and the song is then checked by teams at both NHK and Nintendo before being posted into the game's now-over-2,000-strong downloadable song library.

Sadly, it sounds like this very issue of music rights is what's keeping the game off our shores:

Iwata: Finally, I'd like to ask you about your next "unreasonable" ambitions. We should make this the closing question.

Nishita: My wish is to make a "Band Brothers International". Western music is also appreciated, and it makes me happy. To contribute songs from all over the world, it seems like a dream. But to deal with the legal rights is not yet effective at all, because of that I don't know if it's possible at all, so it is a dream that fall in line with the words "unreasonable ambition".

You all have my sincerest apologies for bumming you out at Christmas-time, but take heart—you can always buy and play the import.