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.

As for the latter, while Namco Bandai tried furthering the fan outreach for the series with the releases of Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, there were still some issues. Tales Brigade, which functioned to promote the game in social media such as YouTube, failed to utilize Facebook and Twitter and kept the outreached locked into the website, where the fans already existed. Talesrpg.com, which appears to emulate the Japanese branch's Tales Channel hub, is barely updated, contains many factual errors and feels entirely separate from the official forums, which reside on a completely different server.

For a true rebirth of the franchise, Namco Bandai needs to tie all of these aspects together. It appears that Namco Bandai still has control of the domain, as it was renewed this May, so the company should tie that website and Talesrpg.com together, cross-posting important updates from one site to the other and vice-versa. The official forums also need to be tied into Talesrpg.com, so they are on the same server and have a similar layout to the official website.

As for the fans, which have been tireless writing on Namco Games's Facebook wall, creating videos on YouTube to spread the word, tweeting on Twitter using the hashtag #TalesFansUnite and voting on the petitions on PlayStation.Blog Share, they need to understand the issues Namco Bandai has to deal with when localizing Tales titles. Up until recently the Japanese branch of the company has had Namco Tales Studio release title after title on almost every platform under the sun. For a series which has a niche following outside Japan, jumping from one platform to another with releases outside Japan would only serve to kill the series entirely in North America and Europe. This is what the company meant when they said they needed to choose carefully when releasing Tales of titles in the West.

Those saying "why doesn't Namco Bandai allow other publishers to localize the games if they won't" need to understand that doing this would create an issue if Namco Bandai decided to localize any of the Tales titles in the future. Instead of only needing to follow one publisher for a game, whoever was publishing a Tales game would need to follow multiple publishers. This causes issues when there is differences in the localization, in which the companies involved would either have to constantly check against existing titles or recton whatever the previous company did.

And if a title suddenly become a runaway hit, just as Atlus's Demon's Souls did, it's obvious that Namco Bandai wouldn't let another company touch their franchise again, even if they couldn't replicate the same sales with the next title in the series they released. With the company currently being in financial difficulties, losing out on a runaway success or sending out a complete bomb will hurt them either way, so they have to make 100% sure whatever Tales titles they do release at least sell well enough to recoup the costs incurred in the game's localization.

As some have already said in wall posts on the company's Facebook wall, the North American branch has to talk with their main Japanese branch when it comes to any localizations. Anyone who is expecting a response from the company immediately due to the fan postings shouldn't expecting anything to immediately to come of this. Namco Bandai is a traditional gaming publisher --- news of a localization would come through an official press release, not through Facebook. There are numerous channels that localizations have to clear, and everything needs to fall into place in the company before they can officially announce any of their upcoming games.

Both sides need to come together on this issue if Tales is to survive in the West. The fans need to continue to show their support and convince Namco Bandai that the series can sell well in the West if it is properly managed and advertised correctly. While the company's recent comments about future Tales localizations is finally being informative to the fans, they need to come clean on their intentions for the series in the West, and if they are serious in trying to expand the brand's reach, they need to bring together the fans with their own advertising attempts as well as giving the series a proper release that isn't hampered by bigger titles. If both sides work together, Tales could become a very respectable and profitable franchise in the West, even if it isn't at the same level as juggernauts like Final Fantasy.

For those fans who are want to let Namco Bandai know their opinions there are the following options:

- Vote on this or this petition on Sony's PlayStation.Blog Share website.

- Post a wall post on Namco Games's official Facebook page (be sure to be polite when you do so as overly negative posts only hurt things).

- Fill out this fan survey, the results of which will be sent to Namco Bandai sometime in the near future.

- Send a tweet to @NamcoGames or @namcobandai using the hashtag #TalesFansUnite (as before, please be polite).

- There are publicly listed phone numbers for the company which can be called. They are expecting fan calls now so it is very likely you will get a automated response or a canned response from one of their representatives.