The last Tales release in North America was Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World on November 11, 2008. Since then, Western fans of the long-running Japanese RPG series have heard little to nothing from Namco Bandai. Following the release of Dawn of the New World, there's been a number of unsettling signs, such as Peter Garza, the localization manager for Tales beginning with Tales of Symphonia for the Nintendo GameCube, leaving the company and the recent layoffs of personnel in their North American branches.

When the PS3 port of Tales of Vesperia was announced last April, many hopes were dashed when rumors about a possible localization came and went. Although there were no localization rumors for the Wii version of Tales of Graces, fans of the series were still left wondering what the future of the series would be in the West, as two of the mainline console games in the franchise had been passed over.

With Tales of Graces now on the PS3, thanks to the recent release of Tales of Graces f, many have been left wondering which version Namco Bandai would release in the West. For those who analyze the port, there's a likely chance that Namco Bandai might have other plans, namely a Wii version of Tales of Graces f. There are some reports (such as this one, although the validity of the article is in question) that this exact idea might happen, more or less. So what is the likelyhood this outcome could become reality?

While there is a wide variety in the released sales figures for Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World on the Wii and Tales of Vesperia on the Xbox 360, generally the figures point to the former selling more copies over its lifetime to the latter, which could be attributed to the rampant success of the Nintendo GameCube version of Tales of Symphonia and the name recognition which carried over into the sequel. No matter the case, there is a fanbase waiting on the Wii that would jump at the chance to get another game on their console. Timed with a well-executed advertising campaign, Tales of Graces could get better, if not near-equal sales to what Tales of Symphonia was able to accomplish.

One of the more telling signs is that Tales of Graces f's graphics aren't radically different than those found in the original Wii version, indicating that outside of the obvious character model and occasional important textures which were most noticeable to the player, the idea of back-porting the content wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility. For anyone who has kept track of the reviews and reception of games in this HD generation, Tales of Graces on the PS3 would get ripped to shreds if released over here. Tales of Graces Wii's graphics were quite impressive for the system and would face far less criticism from the press.

So if Namco Bandai has coded the PS3 port of Tales of Graces in such a way that the PS3 textures could be down-converted and/or altered to work in the Wii version, it would be trivial for Namco Bandai to port over the changes to the Wii version for a hypothetical North American release. And if Dawn of the New World is any precedent, the title might actually perform relatively well, as the Nintendo Wii has little to no good RPG releases as of late. Of course, good sales requires that Namco Bandai actively tries to spread the word about the game, but if they were serious enough to fund a localization after all this time it'd be expected that this would occur, as their recent Western attempts such as Enslaved and Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom has met with disastrous sales. It should be noted that this requires that back-porting would be possible --- if this can't happen the financial issues in taking to time to do so would negate any advantage this would have, as Namco Tales Studio would have to be pulled away from their projects or an outside developer would have to be contracted to carry out the work, costing the company money.

All of the pieces appear to be falling in place for Tales of Graces to do well in the West if this theory holds --- it's up to Namco Bandai if they deem the risk to be worth the reward.

UPDATE (10:30pm EST): Some of the more vague sections of the article have been clarified to further reinforce the original intent of the article. We apologize for any miscommunication that might have occurred between now and the original publishing of the article.