Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

[TheGrandMom]

Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy – Tales Series Doomed? | Sankaku Complex

"Tales Studio, the Namco Bandai subsidiary responsible for the long running Tales series of RPGs, has been revealed to be in dire financial straits.
The company is 100% privately held by Namco Bandai, so its public reporting of accounts is limited, but what it has published recently is none too promising:

- you'll have to access the link to see the chart because they've blocked the image - TGM

These figures essentially show an annual loss of 1 million dollars and an accumulated debt of 21 million dollars, exceeding their total assets – the company will either go bankrupt, “restructure,” or go cap in hand to Bandai bosses begging for more cash based on promises of future success – which may be problematic considering the size of the loss they are dealing with themselves.
An alternative might be a re-absorption into Namco Bandai, although this would not guarantee any success in actually tackling the decline of the franchise.
Even amongst Japanese RPGs the Tales series stands out as being devoid of innovation and consisting of little more than an interminable series of rehashes, remakes and spin-offs. Whether the company’s decline can be arrested before bankruptcy or dissolution seems doubtful considering its parent company is hardly managed any better."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So this is probably why no ToV release on the PS3??

The Tales series is one that I cherish, I certainly hope they can pull out of this and rebuild. Just don't sell it off and let some other asswipe company ruin the series.

[jenova_9]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

Tales did innovate with real-time battles and adding co-op recently. hmm maybe JRPGs are not that popular lately.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but maybe if they didn't whore out Tales on a seasonal basis, perhaps they wouldn't going bankrupt. Tale is no Final Fantasy, but it produces at a rate that far exceeds the demands or wants of its fanbase.

I'd expect ports and reissues from these guys for a while. New projects would kill them.

[Armando]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

Tale is no Final Fantasy, but it produces at a rate that far exceeds the demands or wants of its fanbase.

I don't follow the series too closely either, but they seem to be making the main characters younger and more moe with every passing game.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

Its one of those RPG franchises that gets too anime for its own good. Its not that people can't stomach a little humor or cuteness in their RPGs, but these don't have a real edge to them like a Nippon Ichi strategy RPG might.

Disgaea is cute and funny, but it also swears and has demons and backstabbing. It actually helps the sugary sweetness go down.

[Balfree]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

Has anyone played Tales of Symphonia for the Wii? Dear lord I wanted to strangle myself with something after a couple hours... nothing about it was remotely well done. I was literally embarrassed of played that game, I'm not surprised AT ALL.

[Feba]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

hmm maybe JRPGs are not that popular lately.

This would be easier to judge if they were still being made on consoles. BBQ, you can explain why everyone is rushing to the handhelds for me, but the sad thing is, there hasn't been even a decent turnbased RPG on a home console in a long time. Hell, the last one I'm aware of is Persona 4, that was what, 08? There's probably been another couple SMT games since then that aren't too bad. But no FFs (except 13, which bombed), no DQ/DWs, nothing.

[Armando]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

Has anyone played Tales of Symphonia for the Wii? Dear lord I wanted to strangle myself with something after a couple hours... nothing about it was remotely well done. I was literally embarrassed of played that game, I'm not surprised AT ALL.

Haven't played that one but a couple of months back I saw a trailer for the upcoming Tales game, and while it looked graphically impressive, it just seemed like a long chain of bad anime and RPG cliches. Made me go "do not want" immediately.

I played Tales of Phantasia (the first game, for SNES) and it wasn't anywhere near that bad. Yeah, it started off pretty cliche (your dad's the best swordsman in town, you're just a teen, town gets burned down by some black knight dude while you're out hunting for tonight's dinner) but after that it was OK. The characters were endearing, the battle system was ok, you regen some MP at the end of each fight and you can buy battle avoidance items pretty cheap and early - far more considerate than Final Fantasy at the time.

[Balfree]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

The first games were AWESOME.

The new ones coming out are just... donotwant

[Malacite]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

Vesperia was the last good one quite frankly.


And innovating with real time battles, J9? Grandia says hi.

[Balfree]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

And so does Star Ocean

[Gobo]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

BBQ basically hit the nail on the head. Namdai tried to whore the series out like FF and DQ, but there are some issues that came up. The fan base is not strong as other JRPG series, yet there 4 titles released within a year, i think in 08. The Tales of fan base isn't strong enough to support that. It's a cult, not a mass.

There is also the fact that all tales games not sold on Sony systems do poorly in Japan. While some do break 250k, the Sony games are 600k+ (with the exception of Legendia, but that's because it wasn't made by the main teams). Compare 360 Vesperia, which sold 220k, to the PS3 version, which sold more than that in its first week. The PS2 version of Symphonia, which barely had more than the GC version, sold nearly 100k more copies. Graces for the Wii, the most recent one, though all 7 playable characters made the top 30 in the 2010 popularity poll and the main character landing 3rd, hasn't even sold 200k and it was released last December (Idiots released it a week before XIII and it had quite a few bugs). Hell, even the "Escort" titles are selling better than most of the recent "Mothership" titles.

Also Dawn of the New World wasn't made by the main team, but it did suck some serious ass. Bought it off of amazon with a gift card, played it, beat it, sold it to game stop for $35.

In case you were wondering, 5 Mothership titles (Destiny 2 [PS2], Rebirth[PS2], Innocence [NDS], Hearts[NDS] and Graces [Wii]), a lot of Escort titles (Tempest, Narikiri Dungeon 1-3, Radiant Mythology 2 and a few cell phone titles) and 7 remakes ( Phantasia [PSX, PSP],Destiny[PS2], Symphonia[PS2], Destiny 2[PSP], Rebirth[PSP], and Vesperia[PS3]) have not been released outside Japan. Sorry, let me make that 8 since Narikiri Dungeon 1 has been remade for the PSP and is being released in August.

So yeah, this sucks. I love the Tales series, would import Vesperia in a heartbeat if I had a PS3, but they did this to themselves. Its not surprising, which is really unfortunate.

What's this going to mean for future titles and foreign releases? Who really knows. There is a rumored PS3 title codenamed Ultia being made atm and the studio is supposed to make a big announcement this summer. Will it force Namdai to look to companies like Atlus or XSEED to localize games for overseas to help turn a profit or will they become even more Japan focused and keep the games there? Namdai could just let them go bankrupt and sell off the series to someone else. Time will have to tell for this one.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

This would be easier to judge if they were still being made on consoles. BBQ, you can explain why everyone is rushing to the handhelds for me, but the sad thing is, there hasn't been even a decent turnbased RPG on a home console in a long time. Hell, the last one I'm aware of is Persona 4, that was what, 08? There's probably been another couple SMT games since then that aren't too bad. But no FFs (except 13, which bombed), no DQ/DWs, nothing.

Well, the reality is that in Japan, the home console continues to be on the downtrend. Its only the western market that really, really cares about sitting around playing a game. And cultural differences in living space and lifestyle also have a great deal to do with it. Western players have a lot of space, the Japanese live in homes that are more dense. Japanese people are still more interested on local multiplayer than online multiplayer as well. So these are factors.

Then back in 2008, the RPG to beat was Monster Hunter Freedom 3 (our Monster Hunter Freedom Unite in the US) on PSP. This franchise reached the level of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and it remained the top selling handheld game over there until Dragon Quest IX came out. Now Japanese developers focus on the new top dog and even games like Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Namco's God Eater and SE's FFXIV bear some very Monster Hunter inspiration. Hell, MGS: Peace Walker isn't even subtle about it, Monster Hunter elements have almost been perfectly merged into the Metal Gear gameplay and that's before you get to the MH crossover content.

Capcom changed the RPG market in a big, big way. There is now a holy trinity over there and the third game is not a Square-Enix title. And everyone wants to be the company that can surpass Monster Hunter. Dragon Quest is Dragon Quest, everyone expected that to go really well.

And, for whatever reason, until recently Monster Hunter never really made it mark in the west. Monster Hunter Tri has been a larger success thank usual, much thanks to get getting around the Wii's Friend Codes, but PSP just does not sell the way it does in Japan it does in the rest of the world and certainly not like Wii and DS do in teh west. PSP is only selling 11% of the handheld software while iPhone has almost 29% of the market leaving Nintendo with a big healthy 60%.

HD did not help traditional RPGs, either, SE has said much about it and have you noticed how even smaller companies like Atlus have been mum about their own Shin Megami Tensei PS3 game? That's been on the books since PS3 was released at least. Its going on four years now and still not a thing about it.

And yet, when 3DS was announced, Atlus pledges three SMT games to 3DS vs. PS3's one. The last four SMT games? Handheld, Persona 3 Portable is the fourth. They had nothing to show for 3DS, but even so, if there's three projects we're certain to see one soon. More likely than PS3's SMT game.

Nintendo wasn't totally asleep when Monster Hunter hit it big on PSP, they wanted a piece of that action. They knew if their next handheld wasn't bigger and better than PSP in every way, they'd never get in that market, even with DS's market share.

So the RPG war has been fought on handhelds since this new generation of consoles began. HD just complicated matters.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

Just throught I'd throw this out there.

I was reading 1Up's "The Grind" RPG blog and it turns out some of the people that did Tales of Symphonia that later broke off from the Tales team have recently done work on Arc Rise Fantasia on the Wii.

It actually does bear somewhat of a strong resemblance to a Tales game in appearance, though in gameplay its turn-based.

I've also heard the English voice over and i'm not usually one to complain about such things, you can pretty much tell this was a Shenmue-quality job. You know, the sort of dub where they're like "Hey Yoko and Daisuke know some English, right? Let's call them in to read some lines. No need to hire some western actors for this."

Still, the game itself has potential. I'm gonna wait for reviews later this month, just in case.

[Gobo]

Re: Tales Studio Near Bankruptcy

I wonder how many, who and when they left. Mostly curious since Namdai/Banco is about to announce the next game this week, rumored to be Tales of Ultia for the PS3, made by Team Symphonia. Team Symphonia's last game was Vesperia.