TGS 2011: Namco teases new Tales of game

Namco Bandai has released a new entry in the Tales series almost every year for the past 15 years, with 13 games sporting the “Tales of…” prefix since 1995. In fact, they released a new Tales game a few days ago in Japan and it’s selling extremely well, so it should come as no surprise that they’ve no plans to slow this franchise’s roll. A teaser site has just popped up on Namco Bandai’s official site, counting down to the revelation of a new Tales game. The countdown clock is currently ticking away, set to expire at 5PM PT on Wednesday—right near the end of Namco Bandai’s Tokyo Game Show press conference.

How do we know for sure that it’s a new Tales and not just the localization of Tales of Xillia? Well, the title of the page is actually “New Tales of,” so it’s not like they’re trying to hide their hand all that well. Beyond that, however, the website is very secretive. There’s a logo that looks like the logo on every Tales box, and some wispy things floating around. Neither of those bits of information shed any light on what we might find in the next game.

While the impressive sales of the PlayStation 3 exclusive Tales of Xillia might point towards Namco continuing to bring the franchise to Sony’s home console, recent rumors have been mentioning Tales in the same breath as the PlayStation Vita, so there’s a good chance we might be seeing a new handheld entry in the series instead. This totally makes sense, too, considering how much third-party support has been thrown behind Sony’s upcoming handheld, which is still scheduled for release in Japan in 2011. But we won’t need to spend way too much time speculating; the countdown only has about two days left, and once we know the details we’ll be sure to share them with you. Stay tuned Tales fans.

Sep 12, 2011