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.
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.
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.
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!
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