#talesofvesperia
During the course of my recent interview with Colin Noga and Aaron Lindsay about their experience creating an English patch for Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, I learned about another fan translation in the works. While the pair was working on a translation patch for Tales of Graces (which was sadly canceled upon the announcement of Western localization), half of their team started up another project: a translation of the PlayStation 3 version of Tales of Vesperia. More »
#moneytalks
In the West, Tales of Vesperia was released on the Xbox 360. Only. In Japan, it was released on the Xbox 360, forcing Japanese people to buy Microsoft's console. Then, a year later, it was released on the PS3. More »
If you somehow damaged your Tales of Vesperia disc, you can pick up one for $23 from Amazon as part of the retailer's Deal of the Day. Also available today: Eternal Sonata for $20, which is mostly noteworthy for its ability to qualify your Tales of Vesperia order for free shipping.
#bandainamco
Namco Bandai's "Tales" franchise is quite popular in Japan. It's so popular that Tales of Vesperia caused the Xbox 360 to sell out in Japan — quite a feat considering the sluggish sales in the region. More »
#namcobandai
Namco Tales Studio is the developer behind Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Eternia, Tales of Destiny and Tales of Vesperia. The studio has seen better days. More »
Tales of Vesperia continues gracing the PS3 with more and more content. The First Strike, an animated film prequel to the game, will be available on Blu-ray in Japan and it'll unlock extra costumes for the PS3 version of the game. (Undoubtedly, this will make some Xbox 360 owners quite angry.)
This isn't the first time a Blu-ray has been enhanced for the PS3. Most recently, District 9 featured a playable God of War III demo. Zombieland also includes a dynamic XMB theme. However, Tales of Vesperia seems to be charting new territory by unlocking additional game content via a Blu-ray movie. It's certainly an interesting experiment: one we'd like to see more and more movies take advantage of. See a trailer for the movie after the break.
[Via Andriasang]
[Update: Abyssal Chronicles has updated their story, reporting that Mr. Koyama has updated his original blog post with the following clarification: "When I mentioned being on sale for the Wii, I meant Tales of Graces, and not Tales of Vesperia! I truly apologize to everyone for the misunderstanding!!!!" Well, we can see how that would be confusing. You'll find our original post below.] Lock the doors and board up the windows, folks. Considering the seismic backlash to the announcement that the (formerly) 360-exclusive Tales of Vesperia would be coming to the PS3, we fear for what might happen when this story gets out. Japanese voice actor Rikiya Koyama, who provided the voice for Vesperia's pseudo-antagonist Duke, recently mentioned on his blog that, "Tales of Vesperia is coming out on one thing after another: Xbox 360, then PS3, and now upcoming, goes on sale even on the Wii." While this may deeply excite RPG-loving Wii owners, keep in mind that it's entirely possible Koyama meant to say Tales of Graces, the franchise's next installment which is, in fact, coming to the Wii. Just think about that before you start snapping the pieces of your already-snapped 360 Vesperia disc in protest. Those edges can get pretty sharp. [Via Kotaku]
During an event celebrating the recent theatrical release of Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike in Japan, Namco Bandai's Makoto Yoshizumi said there is a strong internal desire to develop a sequel to Xbox 360 and PlayStation Tales of Vesperia. According to Yoshizumi, staff have questioned whether a Vesperia 2 is in the publishers future, leaving him to jokingly respond, "Don't talk like a fan!" "We're thinking about it," he told press during the creator discussion in Japan's Shinjuku district. According to the panel, Vesperia's story is far from over as Namco Bandai is already brainstorming ideas if the opportunity for a new film in the series arises. "I don't know when it will happen, but we'd like to show [these things] in video form," Namco Bandai's general manager told those in attendance. Hopefully Namco Bandai will release a potential sequel for all platforms simultaneously, otherwise we may have a repeat situation of angry Japanese gamers on our hands.
If Xbox gamers feel betrayed enough to destroy their discs and burn magazines over the PS3 port of Tales of Vesperia, how are they going to react to news that costumes from Vesperia are also no longer exclusive, appearing in the Wii's Tales of Graces? Will they stand for this minor outrage?Given away as a download code on a pre-order bonus DVD, the costumes enable players to dress Aspel, Sophie, and Cheria as Yuri, Patty, and Rita. Look forward to some angry message board posts featuring a spurned gamer giving a ruthless thumbprint to his Xbox disc, or throwing it straight in the garbage, then pulling it out and cleaning it.[Via Andriasang]
Walking around the streets of Akihabara, you'd be hard pressed to find a copy of Tales of Vesperia for PS3. Why? The game has sold over 140,000 units in one day, according to initial reports from Japan. Already, that's more than the first month of sales for the original Xbox 360 version, and nearly equal to the lifetime sales for that version. The promise of added content and being on a system that Japanese people actually own both contributed favorably to Namco Bandai's sales.While Namco Bandai must be pleased with the money they're raking in (from yesterday's sales, and from Microsoft), they have yet to announce a US release for Vesperia PS3. We think there are a lot of new PS3 owners that would love to check out the game on Sony's console.
What do Vampire Rain, Tales of Vesperia, Lost Planet, Eternal Sonata and Enchanted Arms all have in common? Aside from being developed in Japan, every one of them landed on the Xbox 360 "exclusively" first, only getting ported (sometimes with additional content) to the PlayStation 3 a year or so later. One Japanese developer claims the exclusivity agreements are being used in lieu of financial help from Sony for game development -- essentially saying that Japanese developers are using Microsoft's capital to develop temporarily exclusive 360 games with the intention of inexpensively porting the games to PS3 later on.
"It was easier developing for the Xbox 360 ... if you sign an exclusive contract with Microsoft (you won't release it on other hardware for a year or similar), they will give you a lot of cash for development," read a Japanese developer's post (the original post has since been removed), translated by Sankaku Complex (site NSFW). "As a result, first you develop for the Xbox, reducing development costs. But the Xbox version won't sell [in Japan]. So they port it to the PS3 ... it's cheaper as you already have the game done."
Though they didn't work on it, the developer claims to have seen this policy in practice with Tales of Vesperia. As Kotaku points out, it's quite possible that the dev did see such a practice on Vampire Rain, a game the mystery developer says they worked on.
