Tales Producer Discusses The West And Shortening Localization Times

Tales series producer, Hideo Baba, is back with another community interview where he fields questions from western Tales fans. He also takes the opportunity to show off some Tales merchandise, like a Tales of Xillia pillow. You can watch the clip above, but we’ve transcribed some of Baba’s more interesting quotes below:

On how Namco could handle Tales differently in the west:

“This is a very difficult problem. We are proud of making the Tales of series a distinctly Japanese RPG. But, for it to be accepted overseas requires all kinds of promotions and things from all angles. We consider this an important issue which we continue to think deeply about.”

On localization and the gap between Japanese and overseas releases:

“Although this isn’t what makes it difficult, Japan is the biggest market for the Tales of series. You all know this already. We do want to have people all over the world play. As an RPG, there’s a lot of text. To localize everything at the same time takes a lot of time, cost, and even work on development. So we can’t help but launch in Japan first, but we’re always looking for ways to make the process more efficient and bring the launch dates closer together.”