Some of the folks over at Siliconera spoke with Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada at E3 this week. They asked him about the possibility of the PlayStation VR title Summer Lesson being localized outside of Japan. Harada made two points in his response to this question. The first is that lip syncing the game in many different languages would be a challenge, saying the lip syncing would be a big deal due to immersion. He went on to say this was not originally planned to even be a full product in Japan, but due to fan request it became one.
He went on to say this about the prospect of localizing Summer Lesson outside of Japan: “Also when you think about the current game situation and the climate in different countries where you have to have characters from every different race or nationality, someone else would say ‘mine is not included,’ which is the climate we currently see with games. Since there are people who can’t set aside the game and the actual problems in society, I don’t want open that can of worms.”
But then he went on to say “But, if there is a particular region with enthusiastic fans who say we ‘want Summer Lesson’ that does make it more possible. That was the case in Japan. It wasn’t scheduled to be an actual product, but there are so many fans who asked for it to be released as a game, and it actually happened.”
My take on this is that it’s highly unlikely we will see this game localized due the current climate of politics in the gaming industry right now. However, if you really want to see this game you should ask Bandai Namco POLITELY to localize it. You never know, a large group of gamers working together can make great things happen.
