Tales of Xillia has proven a major hit, shifting over half a million copies in its first week and already securing the title of fastest selling Tales title ever.
The latest week’s sales figures show Tales of Xillia firmly in the number 1 spot with 525,605 copies sold (as opposed to merely shipped to retail channels).
It is also the best selling Tales title ever, and the second best selling PS3 game in the Japanese market (second only to FF13, and in both cases in first week terms – its eventual sales remain to be seen):
TOX 525,605
TOD 450,099 829,271
TOD2 498,142 762,861
TOE 384,790 669,248
TOR 372,767 596,493
More recent Tales titles had tended to exhibit weaker sales, putting the future of the franchise (at least as a major JRPG) in doubt, but it seems that trend has been dramatically arrested.
The game itself has received some of the best critical reviews of any Tales title, and online raillery is largely absent – although there is the usual grumbling about Bandai’s aggressive use of DLC in place of elements which were formerly part of the game proper.
So far, fans have not uncovered any evidence of Bandai’s much reviled beta-marketing strategy, which can only add to the game’s popularity.
With the Final Fantasy franchise under definite strain in recent iterations, and Dragon Quest reduced to an online game for its latest title, Tales fans are hailing this impressive showing as a sign of a Tales renaissance – although international fans are still left to worry over when, if ever, they will ever see the title.
The Japanese edition is however available internationally now.
In other news, Bandai has announced Tales of Innocence R for the Vita – the “R” standing for “Reimagination” rather than “Remake,” although the latter seems to be more accurate.
I just want them to localize it ;_;
Btw, this DOES NOT INCLUDE THE ASIA Version which is an independent version (although content is 100% same besides DLC) for HK/PRC/Taiwan/Singapore region.
Same… Pre-ordered my import… I am almost certain at least 50k copied were moved by play-asia.com, and another 50k by other major import venues…
ToI sucked.
It will be released in US, cuz if not, it would be a major fuckup on Bandai’s side in financial terms.
On the side note, DO NOT FUCKING DELETE JAPANESE VOICES FROM THE GAME!! JUST MAKE AN OPTION TO CHOSE THE VOICE!! IS THIS SO HARD?? DO YOU NOT HAVING ENOUGH SPACE ON THE DVD???
This is a Goddamn RPG. Since we’re talking Tales series, it’s especially going to have a lot of voice files not only from regular scenes and battle cries but also the little chat the characters would have with each other.
Being that most companies these days tend to push for HD compliance, they’ll want to use to best compression they can stuff in for the audio too, which means larger individual file sizes. Yes, they’d fill up even the Blu-Ray disc.
If you love Japanese language so much, import the damn game because it’s out in Japan now. If you don’t understand Japanese, you have no business demanding them to include two languages and increase the game’s cost due to separate royalty charges for the Jap voices.