A few weeks ago, Hideo Baba, the producer of Namco’s popular Tales Of… series of RPG’s, apparently announced that Tales of Symphonia and its sequel, Dawn of the New World, were getting re-released on the PS3. Apparently those earlier reports were either a mistranslation of Baba’s statements or they were just outright false, as Baba emphatically announced today that there is no Tales of Symphonia HD re-release currently in development at Namco Bandai, nor was there ever any plans to make one.
“So last weekend I went to Madrid, Spain – to expomanga,” Baba said, “And I had a signing session with fans. And I was asked by one of the fans about this rumor. So he said, ‘I heard of a rumor that Tales of Symphonia and Dawn of the New World are getting a ‘Perfect Edition’ on PS3, is it true?’ And [my reaction was] ‘What!?’ I didn’t know anything about it so I was very surprised at that rumor.”
According to Baba, the HD rumor originally started when Baba said that Namco was planning something special for the tenth anniversary of Tales of Symphonia’s release. Somehow, Spanish gaming Koi-Nya site misinterpreted this statement as the announcement of an HD re-release, and other gaming sites around the world (including this one — my apologies,) parroted the information as an official announcement.
Baba says there is no HD port planned for Tales of Symphonia, and says that Namco will simply celebrate the game’s tenth anniversary by holding some sort of fan gathering or festival in Japan.
Symphonia is one of the most popular games in the Tales Of… franchise (even though it isn’t the best game in the series — ‘sup, Tales of the Abyss,): the original Gamecube version of the game has managed to sell over a million copies worldwide, and the game’s story was also adapted into an anime series. Given Symphonia’s popularity, I think an HD remake could be a big hit for Namco, but apparently they don’t feel the same way.
The next game in the series, Tales of Xillia, is still scheduled to be released for the PS3 in the US this August. Its sequel, Tales of Xillia 2, was released in Japan last year and currently isn’t planned for a Western release.
Source: Joystiq
