Tales of the Abyss is already out in Japan and Europe is slated to get the 3DS version in November. Namco Bandai decided to push the game’s release back to February 14, 2012 in North America. Since the English version is already complete, I asked Carlson Choi, Vice President of Marketing, why aren’t we getting Tales of the Abyss this year too.
"It was more timing in terms of a market perspective. The holiday season in the States, it’s pretty risky," Choi explained. "Any game you put in the holiday season you have to make sure you have a good followers behind it. Because there are only so many dollars out there. We want to make sure we get a nice window and there is an upcoming announcement. When consumers hear it they will go ‘Oh, that’s why’."
This is speculation from my side, but I suspect Tales of Graces f, which Namco Bandai will bring to PlayStation 3 won’t be released too far away from Abyss. In Japan, Tales of Graces f has a ton of downloadable content including costumes from .hack, Idolm@ster, and school uniforms. While Choi wouldn’t confirm which outfits were specifically coming over he said to Siliconera, "We’re working on all of those details. Our goal is to bring as much as possible to the market."
"We’re actually looking at a much longer term beyond those two titles of what we can to do bring the Tales series to the fans in the States," Choi said to Siliconera. There are a lot of Tales titles Namco Bandai could release too like the latest PlayStation 3 game Tales of Xillia or the upcoming PlayStation Vita re-imagining Tales of Innocence R.
