Tales of Zestiria Announced

Earlier today, Namco Bandai announced the next installment of the Tales Of series.  Tales of Zestiria will be released in 2015 marking the 20th anniversary of the Tales Of series.  The other great announcement came later when Hideo Baba released a statement on the Playstation Blog that the game will indeed be coming to the western audience.

Tales of Hearts Moving To Vita

Originally released on the DS, Tales of Hearts is looking to get remastered for the Playstation Vita system. Similar treatment as was done for Tales of Innocence R. The new Hearts title is said to be fully voiced, include new events, and have a new character named Calcedony Arcome. It’s slated for a Japanese release window of Spring 2013.

While no information is announced for western release, some are holding hope as recently Namco Bandai has expressed desires for people outside Japan to experience the older Tales titles. As well as their desire for Hearts itself to be localized. Although, it begs the question then. Where is Innocence R localization?

Source: Jump Magazine

Tales of Xillia Confirmed For The West

Finally, Namco Bandai has revealed their next Tales title for the west.  Tales of Xillia will be coming to Europe and North America.

No dates or additional information is available yet.  I’d imagine with the time frame it took for Tales of Graces f post announcement, we’d probably see it mid/late 2013.  This information was given through a tweet from the official Namco Bandai UK account.

@TalesofU:
We are very pleased to announce TALES OF XILLIA is coming to the west!

They then followed up that tweet with:

@TalesofU
Haha fear not my American friends as you are also getting Tales of Xillia.

Perhaps this was really the news the NA Community manager had for us? It’s confusing, but I’m happy either way. I can’t wait for a release date!

Tales Series News Coming Soon

While Japan got some major news recently with Tales of Xillia 2, the west has been quiet since the release of Tales of Graces. That may change soon since Namco/Bandai’s community manager for the west spoke up tonight.

Rich Bantegui ‏ @Filthierich

#TALESOF stuff to share with the community very soon! Tune-in here and don’t forget to like http://facebook.com/tales!!

Could this be the announcement of Tales of Xillia localization? It seems imminent with the development of Xillia 2 in Japan. Or a less likely announcement could be Tales of Innocence R for the Vita. Or could it just be some goofy contest or something goofy just to troll fans into a frenzy? I guess we’ll see. Follow him on Twitter for the announcement, or stay tuned here as I will be covering it if it’s a big game announcement.

Edit: Rich has since replied that it will be some time next week, so don’t expect anything til then.