In July, Tales series producer Makoto Yoshizumi said Tales of Xillia would see a western release if fans showed enough enthusiasm. Either fans have properly shown that enthusiasm or Namco Bandai is just playing it safe, because the Japanese release of Tales of Xillia contains what look to be localization files for different languages, including English, French, and Italian.
The files were spotted by Aeana, who posted her findings on Twitter (1, 2, 3): “Poked around in Xillia‘s files. Found something interesting: all of the game’s text is in files named *.SDBJPN. Every string has a constant identifier, such as STR_BTL_TUT_CHAIN_ALVIN. The interesting thing is that there are other SDB files: SDBENG, SDBFRA, SDBITA, etc… all have the same identifiers associated with empty strings. So the game seems to be localization-ready.”
Namco Bandai has yet to confirm an overseas release.