A really great rundown of what was taken out of the American version of EarthBound.
Resident Evil.Net designed to urge players to finish 'Resident Evil 6' | The Verge
"The impetus for Resident Evil.Net is that we realized a lot of people purchase games and never complete them," Eiichiro Sasaki, director of Resident Evil 6 told Polygon. "We were trying to figure out how we could get people to enjoy the game from start to finish.
Seems to me like the best way to get people to finish your game is to make your game good the whole way through.