Since the release of Tales of Vesperia on the Xbox 360, which was followed by a Japan-only release of a Director's Cut version of the game on the PS3 which appeared to have been in the works from the beginning, as well as a plethora of Japan-only titles in the series, many have wondered if the company still cared about the series in North America and Europe. Namco Bandai has just made a statement on their official Facebook page about just that.
Earlier today, after receiving numerous fan posts on their Facebook page, as well on other social media websites such as Twitter and YouTube, the latter of which was likely the cause of their comments section being disabled, the company finally responded to their fans with the following statement:
Firstly, thank you all for your excitement around the series. We also love the series here at Namco of America and are working with our Japan counterparts to determine if we'll see US releases for these games. Unfortunately, we don't currently have any plans to bring Tales of Graces to the US. If this changes, we'll let you know as soon as we can!
For those who have been following the Tales news as of late, you likely already know that Namco Tales Studio is in severe debt, barely covering their short-term debts and with long term debts almost four times their current reserves. With all this uncertainty, one question naturally comes to mind --- how will this affect the series from here on out?
According to their balance sheets, Namco Tales Studio's current assets plus their fixed assets are around 6.6 million, with their current liabilities just barely below that amount at 6.5 million Yen. While this might not sound all that bad considering the current lackluster state of RPGs in this next-gen era, the long-term liabilities and the shareholder stakes in the company are around 22-23 million --- almost 400% of what Namco Tales Studio could pay. In effect, if the shareholders were to all cash out at this moment, it would effectively "kill" the developer four times over. While this kind of debt can be expected from a start-up company, it is quite shocking for a long-running company to amass this amount of debt.
It is important to note that after 2006 Namco Bandai fully owns the studio after buying the remaining shares from Telnet Japan, so some of these debts could have been passed on from Namco Bandai to hide some of their own debt, which was widely reported when the publisher announced they would be restructuring the company as well as decreasing its workforce.
A new scan has been released which reveals the release date of the DSiWare version of Kamenin Merchant, the mini-game which links up to Tales of Graces to obtain in-game bonuses.
According to the scan, the DSiWare title will be released on December 2nd, 2009 for 200 Nintendo Points, eight days before the official release of the game. Nothing else of interest was noted in the scan.
The official Tales of Graces website has finally been launched, replacing the old "teaser" website that existed earlier.
The finalized boxart has been revealed, which uses the artwork that was seen in the previous scan, which was expected. The game's CERO rating is B, which was the same as Tales of Vesperia (all other games have gotten A), which points to the story being more mature, similar to Tales of Vesperia.
All of the other characters now have their own section (in the teaser site, only Asbel and Sophie had character spots), and the site also reveals that the Kamenin Merchant game, which will be available for download via DS Download Play in Tales of Graces, will be playable on the show floor at TGS 2009.
Five new Tales of Graces scans have been released, which seem to indicate that Richard will be the final party member in the game, as well as giving more information about the Nintendo DS downloadable title revealed yesterday. This game is the first mothership (Namco Bandai's term for non-spin-off games in the Tales of series) game for the Wii. The previous Tales of game for the Wii, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, was classified as a spin-off sequel.
This image shows off a intricate painting of all of the party members. Usually when this type of image has been revealed in the past, it signals that all of the party members have been revealed, so it is likely that Tales of Graces will only include seven playable party members. The second image features Richard, although the information is essentially the same as what we knew before.
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