I’m curious as to whether any of this holds any weight since up till recently it seemed like the Tales branch of Namco had elected follow Minori and Illusion’s example, and then there’s the bankruptcy. Does anyone have anything to say on this?
If you’ve been following Namco’s licensing activities over the last decade, Namco has always tried to get Tales of released on the various Sony consoles: the SCEA has shot almost every one of them down. It’s not a lack of will on Namco’s part, that Tales of is so rare outside of Japan: Sony is responsible for that deficiency. As far as Sony is concerned, the only thing Namco is good for, is releasing 3D fighting games.
In regards to Tales of being retired: the last game was released in 2009. They spend about a year per title, and the remake appears to be their 2010 project. So the next Tales of should be out in 2011. Namco is still on their normal schedule.
Tales of the Abyss was a huge international success and Tales of Vesperia, while not on the same level, didn’t do so bad either (released on two systems). There’s no reason why Namco would stop because of a stumble or two. Since Final Fantasy is no longer invincible, and individual Dragon Quests take so damn long to make (don’t expect DQ10 until 2012 or so), they’ve still got a good market share to exploit.
Let’s be honest: all they’ve got is Ace Combat, Pacman, Ridge Racer, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Tales of, and Time Crisis. Namco junking Tales of, is like Nintendo junking Zelda.
I do doubt it is only SCEA blocking Namco Bandai from bringing the port here considering they could have brought Graces on the Wii. It is hard to convince western Tales fans that it wouldn’t sell on the Wii considering the current Wii RPG climate.
Edit: Seriously though, why would the SCEA shoot down a confirmed money maker if Abyss and Vesperia (I don’t know how Symphonia 1 and 2 or Legendia did) sold so well. I can, very grudgingly, understand why they won’t allow anymore Sakura Taisen since 5 didn’t sell well, but a series that’s already confirmed to sell well? That’s just idiotic
There’s more to it than that. Graces had a huge number of bugs in the production release, many of them “game breaking” and causing crashes. Some of the source code was lost (never specified why) and after the disc recall, several of the programmers were fired. Those same programmers would have been vital for localization. It’s not a lack of will, but lack of resources. Obviously with the restructuring, more people will be let go.
The game also sold poorly in Japan (i.e. less than 200K) - maybe or maybe not because of the bugs - and since Tales of generally sells fewer copies in the West than Japan, there wasn’t much investor interest in providing the extra $$$ needed to hire more programmers for localization.
Tales of Hearts was not released outside Japan, because it uses the 2 gigabit cards, which are very expensive to produce. For comparison, Pokemon only uses the 512 cards. So yea… you can understand why that didn’t get a green light (x4 the material costs).
According to Namco’s official count (the following are in thousands… i.e. Fantasia sold 249,000 copies):
The Destiny saga was the high point. Rebirth and Abyss brought back a lot of hope. Vesperia did well because it sold on two consoles. Graces was a flop. They’ve never been able to match the 500K level of Abyss, and so have been losing money on each venture, with the exception of Vesperia (which would have failed if it wasn’t released on two consoles). Graces finally broke the camel’s back.
You’re the only person I’ve ever ran into that would defend them so strongly. The strong majority, finally, is upset at Namco Bandai for their practices with Tales, but I am glad you can defend them with facts. I still won’t buy a new Tales game that comes here even if they truly believe a few main series games would bankrupt them when they publish so many other flops here. I don’t want to go into that as I did edit that previous post.
The only thing I’d bring up that I edited out is that it is too bad they didn’t target the market as NISA does.
It’s probably because I’ve worked in the commercial video game market as a developer. I can sympathize with them, and seen the politics that runs the industry. Sadly, most gamers don’t know a fraction of what goes on, because of NDA’s and the rules that first party companies enforce on everyone. However I’m not trying to defend Namco’s lackluster performance, just that there are reasons for why Namco has been lackluster. They’re not out to piss off customers on purpose.
Tales of has been doing poorly in the sales market, which means customers are tired or angry at the brand. That’s all they need to do as buyers: they’ve spoken with their wallets. Namco will either (a) clean house and start over to regain customer interest, (b) sell/outsource the IP brand to another company, (c) retire the brand for several years or indefinitely. That’s all they need to do as a company.
I’m assuming they will do (a) in 2011, and if that fails, will go route (c) until the 20th Anniversary (which would be 2015). By then, maybe Fujishima will be done with Ah My Goddess, and be willing to work as a lead designer again. A lot of hardcore Tales fans in Japan, were pissed when Fujishima left (who did so, because of the AMG anime and creating Paradise Residence).
EDIT
I should point out that NIS is also losing a lot of money, and could file for money problems in the next year if things don’t turn out well. The RPG market in general has been hard hit: it’s a combination of bad economy, poor advertising, second hand sales, and piracy. At least Bandai Namco has $$$ coming from other investments. NIS and Atlus can’t afford this kind of market for long.
The only JRPG companies that are pulling major profits is Square Enix, Game Freak (Nintendo’s Pokemon studio), and surprisingly enough, Natsume/Marvelous Entertainment (Harvest Moon and Rune Factory are quite the gems).
Atlus - another “fan favorite” company - is also in dire straights. There’s a lot of worry that they won’t port Luminous Arc 3, because of a company memo that states they will only port games they’ve created (LA is licensed from Marvelous Entertainment). Investor rumors are pointing that if Atlus drops the contract, Natsume might grab it. YMMV if that’s good or bad.
I’ll admit that it isn’t Namco Bandai that doesn’t want to sell me something. I must also say for every game I buy from XSEED, Namco, Atlus, NISA and Others(?) there are more than 5x more titles from them I don’t play. At this point I am not sure if the companies reach too far or if I play too few games. Seeing as the ones you cite are in the red perhaps it is both, but most of their titles don’t interest me and I don’t feel bad for them if they can’t deliver the ones I want to play.
I actually feel more uneasy with improperly managed JRPGs than I do Tales games I do not see. NISA lost me at Ar Tonelico II. If Namco released a broken Tales game here perhaps my complaints would only change. I personally don’t think Vesperia needs to go west for the PS3, but that updated Tales of Graces should if the Wii version is as buggy as suggested here and elsewhere.
You are the most fearsome opponent I have faced. As expected from a person of the Sith.
I hate to nitpick - but NIS stopped making a profit, that’s not the same as losing a lot of money. (They’re NOT making any money anymore, and they were - and you already explained how that’s very bad - but it could be worse. They’re not ACTUALLY in the black. Yet. Unless the situation worsened in the last six months.)
As for Atlus, fortunately for them, MegaTen is finally taking off in the States. If that hadn’t happened, I think they’d be in some serious trouble now. (Those PSP games … I find it interesting they went from Persona 1 PSP to Persona 3 PSP, skipping over Persona 2 … I’d guess they needed the cash that P3P would bring in.)
Last official reports were in May, indicating that the company is sinking fast. Remember that reports of the 97% profit loss was for Jan. Next report is expected in September. Investors are have already acknowledged it’s a foregone conclusion that NIS will be laying off someones or something, unless there’s a Q3 miracle.
138 million in the hole by September predicted (officially in the negative): as I mentioned in another thread, that’s partly because of the expenses for what they already had in the works, and did not tally in the Jan report. They’re trying to be optimistic and say that by 2011 they’ll be 11 million positive. That assumes they have a good Christmas - I don’t see it happening with the current economic state and corps like GameStop raping everyone with the reseller market. Even if that happens, they’ve still got a debt of over 100 million to pay for. NIS won’t be dead, but NIS will be screwed. (all costs in yen of course)
Year ended Year ended Year to Six months to
Mar 31, 2010 Mar 31, 2009 Mar 31, 2011 Sep 30, 2010
LATEST YEAR-AGO COMPANY COMPANY
RESULTS RESULTS FORECASTS H1 FORECASTS
Sales 1.32 1.29 1.21 221 mln
(+2.3 pct) (-14.4 pct) (-8.5%) (-58.3%)
Operating loss 277 mln prft 25 mln prft 11 mln loss 157 mln
(-89.1 pct)
Recurring loss 271 mln prft 11 mln prft 2 mln loss 162 mln
(-93.7 pct)
Net loss 352 mln loss 153 mln prft 1 mln loss 163 mln
EPS loss Y16,863.84 loss Y7,284.97 prft Y78.51 loss Y7,798.30
Annual div Y200.00 Y200.00 Y200.00
-Q2 div nil nil nil
-Q4 div Y200.00 Y200.00 Y200.00
NOTE - Nippon Ichi Software Inc is the full company name.
If there is no Q1 or Q3 dividend, Q2 will in most cases
correspond to the first-half dividend and Q4 to the second-half
dividend announced before a new corporate law in 2006 allowed
companies to pay and report dividends on a quarterly basis.
For latest earnings estimates made by Toyo Keizai, please
double click on 3851.TK1.[/code]
Full year to Full year to
March 31,2010 March 31,2010
LATEST PREVIOUS
FORECAST FORECAST
Sales 2.12 1.89
Operating loss 235 mln loss 268 mln
Recurring loss 232 mln loss 259 mln
Net loss 332 mln loss 358 mln
NOTE - Nippon Ichi Software Inc is the full company
name.
For latest earnings estimates made by Toyo Keizai, please
double click on 3851.TK1.[/code]
Narg recommends not investing in NIS, but instead, begging Nintendo to take your money. Pokemon is a surefire 15+ million seller. Compare that with estimate that Mass Effect 3 will only sell 2 million copies. Even Metal Slime knows not to challenge Pikachu.
Ouch. That is going to be painful for NIS, yeah. It’s too bad Sakura Taisen didn’t take off for them. (Perhaps if they’d put the Japanese track on the Wii version as well as the PS2 version, the Wii version wouldn’t have done so poorly. Perhaps not. It’s really hard to say.)
I don’t know how they did it, but it seems we’ll finally be getting a new Tales game. Tales of Graces f (and we got the complete updated version and not the Wii version, even luckier for us):
Here’s hoping these two are successes enough that we get more of the series somewhere down the line.
On a side note, considering all the announcements (Osadai, Aselia, a new Last Exile anime, and now a new Tales game), I’d say this is looking to be a good year.
