Earlier this month, Namco Bandai's European branch stated that they had "great plans" in store for the Tales series in 2011. It appears that the North American branch is going to start things off with some sort of reveal next week, according to a new tweet from Namco Bandai's community manager, Richard Bantegui. The tweet states:
Hi #Tales fans! Stay tuned next week for a really cool read* Can't say much but Tales fans will be really excited ~ http://on.fb.me/hPYbxd
The link at the end of the tweet links to the official Facebook fan page for the Tales series, so it's clear that this new will be Tales related (some might remember earlier when a tweet update turned out to be for another series entirely).
Keep on reading to find out more about the new tweet and what might possibly be revealed.
Namco Bandai, as many who follow the company already know, haven't had the best time lately, especially on their official Facebook page, which got bombarded last year by numerous Tales fans. The company has put up a new teaser website with a puzzle, and it looks like this might have something to with Tales.
Earlier today, Richard Bantegui, the new Community Manager for Namco Bandai, put up the following message on the company's official Facebook page:
To start off the week, We've created a great puzzle for you to solve that will lead to something I GUARANTEE that you will be excited about. The puzzle is hard, but I will be giving out clues and hints to help you along. Stay Tuned for more… -FilthieRich
The post linked to a puzzle, which can be found in the source link below. While we're not sure if this has anything to do with Tales, he had been bringing up the series alongside tweets from some of the Japanese employees involved in the series, so this being related to Tales isn't out of the ballpark yet.
According to one of his recent tweets, it appears a new clue might be coming soon, so fans should check both pages over the next few days to see what happens.
For those who have followed Namco Bandai's Facebook wall over the last year, you'll know that their attempts at reaching out to Tales fans hasn't gone over that well. A new post from the company's new Community Manager appears to be turning that around, however.
The new Community Manager, Richard Bantegui, posted this on the company's Facebook wall about two hours ago:
Hey guys! I'm Richard Bantegui, aka "FilthieRich," the Community Manager for Namco Bandai Games. If you've got any thoughts, requests or suggestions about any of our games such as Tekken, SoulCalibur, PAC-MAN and yes, even Tales, let's chat!
He also gives a link to his personal Twitter account, @Filthierich, where fans of all of Namco Bandai's games, including Tales, can tweet him. Currently, the Facebook post has nearly 100 comments and over 50 Likes in just the last two hours. There's quite a few Tales-related tweets showing up in his account as well.
While no localization announcements have come out of this, it is a reassuring sign nonetheless for the company to publicly reach out to their fans and is a welcome change from what occurred last August.
Today has been a crazy week, hasn't it? Namco Bandai threw us a curve ball with the surprise announcement of Tales of Graces on the PS3, confirmation of the third game in the Radiant Mythology series and our first look at the next Tales title, exclusive for the PS3. And to make things more interesting, Namco Bandai made the news not once, not twice, but three different times.
After the announcement of Tales of Graces f in Japan, a few fans posted on Namco Games's Facebook wall (this is the only Facebook presence Namco Bandai has). Namco Bandai posted a response, which simply stated they weren't currently localizing the game. This elicited a huge response from the fans at large, which posted hundreds upon hundreds of posts on their wall.
Namco Bandai had put up a second response, which used the phrase "series" instead of "Tales of Graces", which was taken down shortly after it was posted, creating even more fan posts. The company put up a third statement a few days ago which detailed the issues with localizing Tales games, but it still gave no word of any localizations.
In yesterday's first part of this article, we detailed the recent events surrounding Namco Bandai's postings on Namco Games's Facebook wall and the misconceptions surrounding comments that it would be incredibly easy for the company to release the PS3 port of Tales of Vesperia. This second part details what both sides can do to help release more Tales games in the west.
What Namco Bandai needs to realize with the Tales series is that while it might not be as big of a juggernaut as other RPGs such as Final Fantasy or the company's very own Tekken franchise, there is a very passionate fan base, much like the fan bases for Atlus's Shin Megami Tensei and NIS America's Disgaea franchises.
The company also needs to realize that part of the lackluster sales can be attributed to two factors: release dates and fan outreach. One such example of the former would be Tales of the Abyss's release in North America. Namco Bandai released the title mere weeks before Final Fantasy XII and had little-to-no advertising, with only a few websites having advertisements for the game, compared to Square Enix's mammoth advertising for the their title. With Square Enix pushing out a limited edition version of Final Fantasy XII, many gamers were forced to pick one of the two and many forgoed picking up Tales of the Abyss if they happened to noticed it. The lackluster sales that followed only helped to push the game to the back of the store, furthering hampering its sales.
Keep on reading for more of the second part of the article.
As we've reported on earlier this week both here and here, fans have been posting in droves on Namco Games's Facebook wall after the company posted an initial statement from a series of fans requests about more Tales games in the West. The company has put out a new statement regarding the matter, although it might not be what many fans were wanting to here.
About an hour ago, the company put out the following statement:
We appreciate everyone's enthusiasm for the Tale's series. There are many elements required to successfully bring a game to market and the localization of the series is a huge effort, from text translation and audio recordings to testing of the game. While we currently don't have plans to bring the Tales games to the US, we're looking at each of them and evaluating the possibility of bringing them to market.
With the current financial state of the company, there is a hint of truth to what they're saying, as titles such as Tales of Vesperia barely broke even for the quota they were aiming for in North America. In any case the comment is at least a sign the company is aware of the fans' attempts, even if there was no localization announcement given.
Late last month Namco Bandai's Japanese branch revealed a series of new Tales games, one of which being Tales of Graces f, a PS3 port of the original Wii version which includes a plethora of new additions and updates. After a small number of fans posted on Namco Games, the branch of the company responsible for causal mobile and PC releases, the company posted the following response on their wall:
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 follow the series and the company, Namco Bandai has normally disregarded fan responses to the Tales series, so to have the company acknowledge the fans, let alone comment on talking to their Japanese branch, which has control over what titles the North American branch can and cannot publish, was a welcome sign indeed. Shortly after this announcement, a petition on PlayStation.Blog Share for Sony to help localize both the PS3 and PSP Tales titles was posted, along with a plethora of wall posts on the Facebook wall which totaled over 300 in just a few days time.
Keep on reading for more information, as well as details for how to let Namco Bandai hear your voice on the matter.
Last Friday we reported on Namco Bandai posting a statement on their Facebook wall responding to the comments for a localization of Tales games outside Japan. What followed was over 100 posts to the company's Facebook wall and over 1,000 votes on a petition on Sony's PlayStation.Blog share for Sony to help localize PlayStation titles in the series, among other things. The company responded yet again, but this time things happened quite differently.
The original statement, which was posted less than an hour ago, read: To all Tales fans! We are ecstatic to see all of your responses. Thanks for your loyalty and passion towards the game. Unfortunately we do not have any plans to localize the series at this time. We’ll be sure to let you know if there are any changes to the plans. Thanks again for your support.
For those who closely looked at the comment, it was oddly noticeable that "series" was used instead of Tales of Graces, as in the previous statement. Just the comment alone sparked quite a few negative posts, as was to be expected. But unlike the previous statement, which still can be seen on the company's wall, this new statement, along with its 30+ comments, is now completely removed.
One has to wonder why the company would remove this comment, as it stated almost the exact statement as the previous comment, save the replacing of the game for the series. Namco Bandai has yet to comment on the removal.
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