This news is certain to give us some food for thought. PlayStation Taiwan has announced that Sega will be localizing Phantasy Star Nova and Shining Resonance in Chinese. Obviously, this begs the question why an English version of these games wouldn’t be equally worthwhile for Sega. In comparison, the Taiwanese version of Namco Bandai’s PS Vita game “Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment” received both Chinese and English subtitles, and the game has since been confirmed for a release in North America.
Seeing how many niche Japanese RPG’s are being localized nowadays, and companies like Square-Enix even changing their focus back to JPRG’s for a core audience after the worldwide success of Bravely Default, it’s surprising to see Sega continue to ignore the Western market. Even more so since Sega’s recent financial results weren’t particularly good, largely due to a simple lack of new games. Let’s hope we can eventually convince Sega to release more of their games worldwide.
Mandarin Chinese is apparently a language that also services an audiences in places like Singapore, which is an extremely strong market in SEA and it seems always has been, for reasons I wish I had read about. The treatment we’re talking about here is apparently similar to what’s gone on for the Sen no Kiseki series (I and II so far), by reading a NeoGAF thread on SR and Nova’s Chinese localizations. SEGA seems to be making more overtures to this market generally with the PSO2 lobby celebrating Singapore and Malaysia’s Independence Days.
It’s really a huge shame that these games aren’t being localized. The modern Tales series is pretty successful in the West and Shining Resonance could do well if the audience makes the appropriate connection – there are several things the two have in common. Even still, Shining Resonance has a couple of elements that should help to distinguish it from Tales, and it will help to fill in the lull of japanese ARPG’s should its release be strategically timed. As for Nova, some pretty important Vita games like Freedom Wars are coming out and Nova would make a great follow up.