I really hate saying this but..."The Tales fanbase has been annoying me!"

[Cless]

Hell...Working Designs seemed interested in Phantasia PSX way back when. And I still remember a post by Victor Ireland himself on the long-defunct WD forums talking about how they were denied for ToD2. I remember XSEED trying to grab ToR due to popular demand, but they openly suggested people ask Namco instead. Don't know if anyone bothered trying to go for ToD remake. I also recall something about a niche game company in Europe trying to acquire Innocence and Hearts. I wish I had sources.

One thing that's constantly bugging me is the fact they have every Tales title released in the last 4-5 years in Japan trademarked, and yet keep filing extensions for each of them instead of letting them die. I think Innocence just had its fourth one filed a couple months ago. You're supposed to use the damned things. Eventually they're just going to rack up the cost of localization in renewal fees.

Finally, I've wondered if Peter Garza's departure of Namco USA was actually more like him being laid off because someone higher up decided "Tales is done in the US." It's not impossible.

I hope God Eater does well for you, Namco. However, I'm willing to bet it's going to bomb harder here than any Tales game you could have otherwise localized right now.

[Dimentionalist]

Finally, I've wondered if Peter Garza's departure of Namco USA was actually more like him being laid off because someone higher up decided "Tales is done in the US." It's not impossible.

I've wondered about that too. If he was still there, I wonder if he'd be working on Graces now. Still, no way to know that.

[pedrocasilva]

I hope God Eater does well for you, Namco. However, I'm willing to bet it's going to bomb harder here than any Tales game you could have otherwise localized right now.

It's kinda dumb right? When they're bringing outsourced RPG's like Magna Carta II, Eternal Sonata and other stuff that's bound to sell less over; or how they actually licensed Fragile, a in-house RPG to XSEED...

Why can't they, similarly, bring main Tales over and actually establish them as a respected RPG series? or why won't they license it like they do with other title with whom they won't bother?

It's really mind blowing.

[Datschge]

One reason I was thinking of might be the fact that Namco Tales Studio is a completely separate and pretty autonomous unit, and Bandai Namco was (and apparently still is) afraid of losing control over it. So everything going to NTS has to go through NBGI first, which would be more effort than for actual internal groups which can be contacted more directly being part of NBGI. So since anyone wanting to work with NTS has to go through NBGI they keep it themselves. Or something paranoid like that...

The whole situation always makes me think of the hilariously telling credit line in the liners of the ToE OST: (Back when the staff still was at Telenet Japan instead NTS.)