Unless you're deeply invested in Japanese game development history, you've probably never heard of Tose, but there's a decent chance you've played one of the thousands of games the 45-year-old support studio has contributed to. In 2024, the company was in pretty dire financial straits due to a string of canceled projects, but now it's managed to turn things around thanks in large part to its work on Tales of Graces f Remastered.
In July 2024, Tose reported a 27.6% decline in sales, ultimately resulting in an operating loss of 599 million yen. According to Automaton's translation, the losses were largely down to a number of the company's clients canceling in-development projects.
Now, however, it seems things are turning around. Tose's January financial report (again, via Automaton) indicated net sales of 1,719 million yen, up 83.5% year-on-year, and operating profit of 296 million yen, up from a 212 million yen loss from the same period in the previous year. In the wake of that report, Tose revealed that it helped develop Tales of Grace f Remastered, which appears to have been a key contributor to that turnaround - though certainly not the only one.
Tose is notoriously secretive about the games it's worked on, and it's only been directly credited on a tiny handful of titles since the company was founded in 1979. However, the Game Developer Research Institute - a wiki resource well-respected among retro researchers - estimates that Tose has worked on well over 2,000 games.
Those suspected credits include assisting with graphics on the original Dark Souls and music on Dragon Quest IX. It's even believed the company aided with art dev on The Sims 2 and 3. Between the company's secretive nature and the sheer scope of the list of games it's believed to have worked on, we may never know the true scope of the studio's impact on the industry, and it looks like that influence isn't in any immediate danger of disappearing.
After 17 JRPGs across 30 years, Bandai Namco is gearing up to release more Tales of remasters "fairly consistently" and "as much as possible."
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