Quote:When Namco Bandai revealed in late July that they were bringing not just the newest Tales title to the PS3, but a port of the recently-released Tales of Graces to the console as well, with nary another platform in sight. Many were left wondering what this meant for the series, which since Tales of the Abyss has been jumping around from platform to platform with its mothership titles. If you follow the sales figures however, it starts to become very clear what Namco Bandai's aims are and what effect they have on both the Eastern and Western releases of the games.

Full Story: http://www.talesunion.com/news/ps3-it-on...-1218.html

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Shawn Collier
Software Engineer | Associate Editor

For Namco's sake, I hope they don't plan to release any more main games on either the Wii or Xbox360 "exclusively" this gen any more. Because I'm certainly not going to buy them and the constant ports should have had a similar effect on others. I bought a Xbox for Vesperia, and the only reason I re-bought it for the PS3 later on was because in addition to having major extras, it was in Japanese. I bought Graces for my Wii, and while it's one of my favourite Tales games, and the PS3 version might be better, I very much doubt I'll be re-buying.

Btw, is the PS2 port of Symphonia really the inferior version? I didn't have a Gamecube, and only now having a Wii can I get the NGC version. But I was left under the impression that the PS2 version improved on the original, so I was planning to get that instead. (Planning on Japanese release regardless, so Japanese-only isn't a problem).

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alekth Wrote:For Namco's sake, I hope they don't plan to release any more main games on either the Wii or Xbox360 "exclusively" this gen any more. Because I'm certainly not going to buy them and the constant ports should have had a similar effect on others. I bought a Xbox for Vesperia, and the only reason I re-bought it for the PS3 later on was because in addition to having major extras, it was in Japanese. I bought Graces for my Wii, and while it's one of my favourite Tales games, and the PS3 version might be better, I very much doubt I'll be re-buying.

Considering they have dev tools for both systems now, they could possibly do multiplatform releases ala FFXIII in the West and leave the Japanese releases PS-only. Although that might spread the profits due to having to push out both versions, so PS-only globally might be a better idea.

alekth Wrote:Btw, is the PS2 port of Symphonia really the inferior version? I didn't have a Gamecube, and only now having a Wii can I get the NGC version. But I was left under the impression that the PS2 version improved on the original, so I was planning to get that instead. (Planning on Japanese release regardless, so Japanese-only isn't a problem).

From what I heard there was some slight slowdown because the engine that powered the GCN version wasn't properly modified to work on the PS2. Didn't sound like it was bad as some ports like Bayonetta PS3, but it didn't run as smooth as the original version.

I haven't played it, mind you, but I remember hearing about that issue around the time the game was released.

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Shawn Collier
Software Engineer | Associate Editor