Siliconera caught up with Katsuhiro Harada at E3 2016, and we asked him if there are any plans to release Summer Lesson outside of Japan now they have its release date set alongside the PlayStation VR.
When asked about the chances of getting a localization of the upcoming interactive PlayStation VR title, Summer Lesson, Harada made two points—the first was about the difficulty of bringing it over, and the second is that it originally wasn’t going to be sold as a product but the game happened after getting request from fans.
“It’s difficult because lip syncing to do this properly for each language would be a lot of work. You really need this to be perfect to have immersion in gameplay,” Harada told Siliconera. “To do that for all of the languages would be quite intense with the scenarios themselves because the length would change with each language. That makes it quite difficult to localize.
He continued, “Also when you think about the current game situation and the climate in different countries where you have to have characters from every different race or nationality, someone else would say ‘mine is not included,’ which is the climate we currently see with games. Since there are people who can’t set aside the game and the actual problems in society, I don’t want open that can of worms.”
However, Harada added, “But, if there is a particular region with enthusiastic fans who say we ‘want Summer Lesson’ that does make it more possible. That was the case in Japan. It wasn’t scheduled to be an actual product, but there are so many fans who asked for it to be released as a game, and it actually happened.”
Summer Lesson will release in Japan on October 13, 2016. We’ll have more from Harada-san in our Tekken 7 interview from E3 2016.
