Credit to: J. Noble Gibbins on facebook for this picture
A few days ago, a bunch of passionate Tales of fans started spamming the Namco Games facebook page showing their support for the series and trying to get the games localized including the new Tales of Graces F and the enhanced port of Tales of Vesperia on the PS3. This happened not long after Tales of Graces F was announced.
Now as you can expect, originally Namco just did their usual post about having no plans to localize Tales of Graces at this time (this was when only a few people were asking for it) but a later update said:
To all Tales fans! We are ecstatic to see all of your responses. Thanks for your loyalty and passion towards the game. Unfortunately we do not have any plans to localize the series at this time. We’ll be sure to let you know if there are any changes to the plans. Thanks again for your support.
This was met with lots of responses from people showing their anger over the statement until it was later deleted and subsequently the Tales of fans have been spamming their facebook page and twitter (using the twitter hashtag: #TalesFansUnite ), along with e-mailing Namco and phoning them persistently asking them if they are going to localize the series. From what has been said, most calls have been civil but have still been met with the same responses such as “No plans at this time” or “Keep checking the website for any news”.
This has been going on for days and Namco have still continued to ignore the facebook page and even went so far as to attempt to delete comments just a few days ago. This of course angered fans even more and had some posting the exact thing that was deleted. Even one or two very civil (and truthful) comments were deleted during that time.
The stuff so far has not been the only area where Tales of fans have been showing their support though, there is also a poll on Sonys share.blog site here and a survey here.
There is also a Tales Fans Unite Facebook group and not long after the first share.blog poll but still the last one out of everything that has been mentioned, a new share.blog popped up here except this one is to get Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 localized which is on the PSP, not the PS3 which is what the first share.blog poll was asking.
So far, everything has been ignored but how long can Namco continue to ignore their Tales Of fan base? We’ll see over the coming days I guess.
EDIT: In the time I posted this, I was just informed that XSEED have commented on the possibility of publishing the PSP and PS3 Tales of games, read the article on that here
EDIT 2: There has been some updates since my last edit:
After a day or so more of spamming the Namco facebook, a new post by Namco was put up; it was about Namco Bandai Games America and Namco Networks will be merging under the Namco Bandai Games America label, a Tales fansite named Tales Union put up an article on it here.
After this, people found the soon to be CEOs facebook page and started sending him messages about localizing the Tales series, he responded with the same answer that was later put up by Namco on their facebook page:
We appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm for the Tale’s series. There are many elements required to successfully bring a game to market and the localization of the series is a huge effort, from text translation and audio recordings to testing of the game. While we currently don’t have plans to bring the Tales games to the US, we’re looking at each of them and evaluating the possibility of bringing them to market.
A recent poll on gamefaqs also showed peoples interest in the Tales of series, this will most likely include people who don’t check out the facebook page or know what’s going on so the poll certainly helps shows the level of interest from the western fanbase, you can find that poll here.
A website has now also been put up with the same name as the facebook group, Tales Fans Unite.
All we can wonder now is, how long will this go on and will Namco continue to give the same answer or will they give an answer that is more definitive than what has been given recently. We shall see in the coming days, weeks or months possibly.
EDIT 3: I contacted someone from the Digital Spy and told him about what was going on, he contacted Namco and the subsequent response was:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a259256/tales-of-graces-f-unconfirmed-for-europe.html
Yup, another unconfirmed/no plans answer but what else is new with Namco? This will obviously not please Tales fans, mainly because it is the same answer that is given all the time.
I’ll keep people updated as things happen so check back often.
