Tales of Vesperia debuts strongly for PlayStation 3 in Japan

PS3 fans have been in this situation for far too long. This gen has got to be one of the worst gens for JRPGs. With most Japanese developers outright ignoring the PS3’s japanese oriented user-base and putting their games on the shooter heavy Xbox 360. Many fans of the genre have had feelings of betrayal and disappointment as they saw JRPG release for the Xbox 360 again and again with them all meeting the same fate.

They Bombed. HARD. Some may not realize this but when it comes to JRPGs the region that is most important for the game to do well is in Japan. Since most of the games are made with the Japanese gamer in mind and as a result JRPGs find their strongest support coming from their home turf. So when JRPG devs decided to release exclusive JRPGs on the Xbox 360 (Which had a 1:3 JP user-base to the PS3’s) many fans were left out from playing their favourite games of their favourite genre.

However, it seems that these devs are finally starting to get the message as within the past few months a slew of JRPGs have been announced for our Black Beast.

Among those announced earlier on this year was the Former Xbox 360 Exclusive Tales of Vesperia, the latest iteration of the famous Tales series which is known for pulling respectable numbers in Japan with the last game Tales of The Abyss (Released in 2006 around the same time as FFXII) seeing a impressive sale figure of 570,000 copies in Japan alone Tales of Vesperia had high expectations, which it failed to meet. Miserably.

Tales of Vesperia launched on the Xbox 360 and managed to do a pathetic 106k the first week and then struggled to get past 170k within a year. On the flip side of things Namco released Tales of Vesperia for the PS3 earlier this month which was essentially a year old port that somehow managed to sell 140k within it’s first day and 217k within it’s first week.

To say the least these are very impressive numbers for a YEAR old port and hopefully other JRPG devs will start to catch on to see that if your going to put a JRPG on a home console it should be the PS3. Why? Because thats what the PS3 fanbase in Japan wants and will purchase. Case-In-Point Tales of Vesperia.

To compare the numbers the Xbox 360 version of Tales Of Vesperia has sold 400,000 Worldwide with 170,000 from Japan and 180,000 from the US and a mere 40,000 from the UK.

On the other hand the first week sales of the PS3 version has sold more then half of the 360’s total yearly sales. If this doesn’t wake up JRPG devs I don’t know what will. Lets all hope ToV PS3 finds it’s way to America sometime in 2010.

Readers Comments (7)

  1. I’m not a massive JRPG fan, but this is good news for Japanese PS3 owners an PS3 owners in general!

  2. Wooop! If I was Japanese, I’d be more psyched, but hey! I’m an RPG lover, so I’m glad that Japan might be revitalising their RPG market. Last gen you couldn’t browse through a list of games without having play-worthy RPGs jump out at you. Hopefully that happens again ^_^

  3. All of these JPRG needs to come to the US! Im so tired of shooting everything…… Ill be waiting JRPG!!! lol

  4. Come on devs! We need more jrpgs on PS3, you assholes!

  5. Why would fans feel betrayed and disappointed that the JRPGs were going to 360? You play the games not the system. As long as the games come out it shouldn’t even matter. Most JRPGs are on the PSP and the DS now and days. Should we feel betrayed? The answer is no. You go where you games are. Are we fans of Brands or are we fans of the games?

  6. Just downloading the demo from the japanse store and yakuza 3 demo.

  7. @BlackBond:

    Fans feel betrayed because it’s obvious that the RPG system of choice is the Playstation NOT the 360. It doesn’t matter if the RPG is in the 360 as long as more RPG’s were released early for the PS3. I mean, if you bought the xbox for FPS and then realize you won’t get FPS game for a year, wouldn’t you feel betrayed considering the xbox is known for FPS’s?

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