Tales of Symphonia - Producer Explains Western Success

Tales series producer, Hideo Baba, said that GameCube’s Tales of Symphonia was the most successful Tales game in the West.

He said, “I believe the success of Tales of Symphonia has multiple factors to it, the first being that it was the first Tales title that was rendered in 3D polygons, so we believe that was a huge component to its success. Another huge component was that we had a lot of support from Nintendo, so that allowed us to reach out to a broader audience that we weren’t able to reach before.”

“Our main target audience for the Tales franchise is still ultimately Japan, so when we make a game we want to target our main fanbase,” he said, adding that, after doing extensive research in Japan, the team found that their audience is centered around the PlayStation 3. As a result, the team’s focus remains there.

“So we like the idea of the Wii U — we think it’s a great system — and if it becomes more and more successful in the future that’s a console we would like to tap eventually, but for the time being we don’t have any plans and we are focused on maintaining our fanbase on PlayStation 3,” he added.

“It’s not really about our opinions on whether or not it’s a good system; ultimately it becomes a question of, ‘What consoles do our fans have?'”

In case you missed it, you can view 2 trailers of Tales of Xillia, which will release on PlayStation 3 August 6th.

Are you looking forward to playing?