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In looking at North American publisher's patterns, you can often predict what they are going to release over here in North America. It's a simple process of seeing what they've brought in the past, who developed the game, and when it was released in Japan. I don't claim to be 100% accurate in this, but it's simple enough to take a stab, so here I go. Since I feel that things have changed greatly over the past few years, I'll only be focusing on publishers with recent RPG dealings.
Square Enix is in an interesting position right now, as they have a good deal of RPGs still in holding and only a small handful of games officially confirmed for NA release: Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Dragon Quest VI, and Dissidia. They've also more or less announced Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers, so that's a given. Lots of SE's games are no-brainers though like most anything with Final Fantasy in the title. I also see no reason whatsoever for North America to miss out on another numbered Dragon Quest, even though IX has not been officially confirmed. Most Square Enix titles are simple, but games like Front Mission 2089, Sigma Harmonics, and the new DS Chocobo titles are a little less certain. I'm going out on a limb to say that Square Enix will bring all of those over. I realize that games like Front Mission 1st didn't do extremely well here, but I see no reason why they wouldn't find some way for them to hit North America. If we're getting Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, I think we'll see these releases as well.
Atlus. The publisher you never know what they're going to do next. I think Persona 4 and Devil Summoner 2 have answered that question for us. Even if they only do a limited print, I see no reason why any other Atlus developed game wouldn't see our shores. I'm focusing this thought directly toward the unannounced Growlanser remake for PSP. I believe that Atlus USA rushed the announcement of Persona PSP to offset the flood of leaks they'd been getting with new releases. I don't believe for a second that SCEA is blocking its release or that Atlus isn't considering bringing it over. It will come, just give Atlus some breathing room between announcements. I'd also say that along with most any Japanese release from Success or Sting, I think Atlus's working relationship with Banpresto, Namco Bandai, and Flight-Plan on Summon Night: Twin Age and Eternal Poison could likely mean a localization of the 2008 Japanese DS remakes of Summon Night 1 & 2. Atlus is an interesting publisher with a lot of friends, so there is no telling what else we might see. Going way out on a limb here would be a release of the PlayStation 2's Sacred Blaze by Flight-Plan, though following that crazy line of thought, Atlus could even possible manage to snag Shining Force Feather if Sega passes on it. Since it is also Flight-Plan developed and Sega is just the Japanese publisher of Feather, it's not impossible. Especially considering that Sega published Crimson Gem Saga in Japan. Time will tell.
NIS America is a tougher cookie to predict. Not because they don't follow any patterns, but because they don't have as much variety in their data. Basically, anything that is made by their parent company Nippon Ichi in Japan will be a safe bet, though NISA seems to announce these localizations fairly close to the reveal of the Japanese versions. They do have a good working relationship with Gust, so the confirmation of Atelier Annie could point us toward a possible localization of the future PlayStation 3 title Atelier Rorona as well.
XSEED is even harder to predict as a stand-alone publisher. Their relationship with Marvelous seems to point toward games such as Yuusha 30 (aka Hero for 30sec) and Valhalla Knight: Eldar Saga as a co-publishing deal, but by themselves they've been a little more limited. Wild ARMs and Shadow Hearts have been the two big series for XSEED, but neither have had any recent offering in Japanese, so those wells are dry. XSEED has worked with Media Vision on three Wild ARMs titles now, but Media Vision's latest offering RIZ-ZOAWD was published by D3 in Japan, so they would likely have the best chance of bringing that over, but you can't rule XSEED out.
I thought of trying Namco Bandai, but the only thing I could think of was a prediction of some Tales games making it and others not. So, last of all is Ignition. A company that's been around for a while, but has done little in the realm of RPGs until recently. While they don't have an RPG track record to follow, their pattern of strongly supporting SNK releases has me wondering if we might see a state-side release of SNK's RPG Kimi no Yuusha.
I'll be interested to look back in a year's time and see which of these have come to pass. The patterns are there if you look close enough, so I guess I'll just keep my ear to the ground and see what happens over the next little while. There are a lot of RPGs to pick up, especially for the DS, so only time will tell who, if anyone, will bring us Inazuma Eleven, Spectral Force Genesis, Nanatama: Chronicle of Dungeon Maker, or Fragile. But if there is one thing that I've seen, is that if there is a way for a game to make it over, it's a lot more likely to happen now than ever before.
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