I agree with the article, after trying to spread to other platforms and failing to recreating the success they found in the years on the playstation 1&2. They're now shifting their primary platform to the Playstation brand in hopes to recover their fanbase they had on the Playstation.

Now they have Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Graces F, the next Tales of for PS3 while they have spin offs and Remakes like Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X and Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3 for PSP.
I hope NamcoBandai eventually will bring theses titles to the West.

I'm still waiting for the English version on the completed Vesperia... My Japanese isn't perfect so I'm missing a geat deal of dialogue playing through the Japanese PS3 version of the game.

I disagree with the article as well.
tales of symphonia was like the most successful taLES of game of all time even if the article tells you i have to say it again.
1 the release was screwed and people still bought the game
used and off word of mouth. I got it early and got at least 20 people in my school to buy rent or get a used copy or borrow my copy. still never got disk 1 back. TOS actually got me hooked to the series.I hope the new one for the wii comes out. because those are dam good numbers considering the series never sold over 2mill or even 1mill 300k is pretty dam good imo. goldensun did better though because they did something right. namco wont bring the titles to the west with commercials they just send it west for the geeks and otakus that are fanboys for the series like me. And that is why they will never sell epic numbers. hopefully this ps thing works because i wont buy it until they put it on the original system even if it sells 10k copies on the wii its still 10k with no marketing which is a good feat.

Goes to show to platform exclusives aren't always a bad thing. Whoring your IP around (unless it's FF or DQ) can dilute the strength of the franchise. Very true too, when you're talking about niche games. They develop a specific audience that is used to a series on a particular platform. Mix that up, and they A.) try it on another platform or B.) move onto another IP.

Seems that Tales doesn't have the same gravitas as the other major JRPGs. They should have just left the series where it was and cultured the fanbase. As it is, people are just confused.

And yeah, like you tinybigman, I played Vesperia on the 360. I was a bit miffed when it was announced for the PS3 with extra content and even more ruffled when it looked like Namco didn't give a $h!t about releasing the "complete" version in the West. They've bungled the series about as bad as one can bungle it.

i don't understand why the completed version isn't being released to the US.

are the obvious financial benifits more then they would have gotten from pure sales to the correct (PS3) fanbase?

if vesperia was a PS3 exclusive, advertised a bit and released world wide day and date i think the sales could have been way better

@silvacrest: Vesperia 360 was around the time Namdai started putting mothership titles everywhere, so I guess they hadn't gotten enough data to realize it was a bad move.

lol man that was a good 1

Burn?
Also: Lol @ audiobooks on ps3: for the individual who will be sitting in one spot for an extended period of time, enjoys books, but doesn't want one.

Not saying they can't reuse everything, but some scenes would be changed due to adding in Flynn/Patty. Plus the newly-voiced scenes and the changed skits.

Well seeing as the English actors have done the extra stuff too you have to wonder just what the hell the hold up on the westernised ToV PS3 full version actually is.

N/B seem to have a death wish for the Tales games. Or just hate wersterners playing them these days. Pi55ed off plenty of Japanese gamers who bought a 360 JUST for Vesperia as well looking back-the self same gamers who ended up the only HD console owners in the world unable to play a localised version of FF13 as it goes! I often wonder if MS were just badly advised over the whole jrpg BS exclusive/timed nonsense as it just seems like a daft waste of investment and not even the devs seem to have made much out of it either. God knows who they imagined would win out of it all when the upshot was just going to be games released on the platform with fewest interested gamers on it and then feeling majorly duped when the games surface elsewhere when the exsclusivity runs out after those few bought into the exclusive lie.

Nobody seemed to get a great deal out of all of that nonsense.

@mastiffchild: Yeah, if it was true that they already voiced all the new stuff it doesn't make any sense why it'd be held back.

You're losing money that way (since they'd likely already have the promotional material done in that case). They don't like to advertise that much so that cost wouldn't add up to that much.