Namco Bandai’s Tales Studio, known for their work on games like Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Symphonia, may be in trouble financially.
Recent financial reports have shown that the studio has accumulated a debt of 21 million dollars and an annual loss of one million dollars.
Ouch.
It looks like the developers are taking the heat, as Tales producer Makoto Yoshizumi revealed in a tweet. “Meetings and conferences, sleepiness and struggle, it was a day of live or die,” he wrote. He said that he’s going to be busy next week (now this week) and that “it’s going to be gloomy”.
Perhaps this is the reason PS3′s Tales of Vesperia and Wii’s Tales of Graces have yet to hit the west?
The studio is to release a new PSP title, Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X, for Japan in August. They’re planning a major announcement for the series sometime in the summer.
Thanks, Kotaku.
i want Vesperia PS3 to be localized so bad!! dam this suks… some1 must be “stealing”… with all that dlc costumes >_>” how can they even hav an annual loss!!
I wonder if anyone actually buys them.
Damn it, I hate to see companies facing difficult financial times.
As Sal says it will be interesting to see if somebodies offers to buy the Studio, or whether they manage to dig themselves out of this themselves.
Hopefully a new Tales games and the long awaited PS3 port of Vesperia in the West will get things going again for the Studio. Shame though.
Remember when Square-Enix wanted to buy tecmo? This seems like a win – win to me.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they tried.