XSEED Games Undecided On Localizing Story Of Seasons: Trio Of Towns DLC

Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns is set for a North American launch later this month, and while the Japanese version of the game received extra downloadable content after its launch, XSEED Games is unsure if they will localize the DLC to North America. In a post on their official Tumblr page, XSEED Games broke down what was included in the downloadable content, and what’s involved with bringing it to North America.

The total size of the DLC is over 200,000 Japanese characters, making it as large as some games we’ve released. The first Corpse Party, for example, has about 210,000 characters.

The last round of DLC was released in Japan in mid-December, which means that the Japanese text was completed after we’d entered the QA and submission phase of localizing the main game. With DLC of this size, including it in the game would have been impossible under our schedule. It would have forced us to release months after we’d originally planned.

The downloadable content for Trio of Towns was released in four patches in a six month span, and included a new bachelor and bachelorette, a new farm event, a new pet, costumes based on Rune Factory 4 characters Lest and Frey, and much more.

So, will the DLC ever be released in North America? The truth is that we’re still discussing it. Given the size of the DLC, it would cost upwards of six figures to localize it (over half of which is programming and QA costs). For the amount of money and manpower we would need, we could almost release a full other title. The price of the base game in Japan is more than in North America, and they sell about twice as many games as we do here, factors which made it easier for them to release the DLC for free. We are really grateful to fans for their continuing support of the series under its new name, but releasing DLC of this size for free is beyond our means.

This places us squarely between a rock and a hard place. We either don’t localize the DLC at all, or we release it as paid DLC. Neither of these is ideal, but we have to be realistic as a smaller publisher.

The price point we’re looking at, after comparison with other paid DLC with similar content, is $3.99 each for three patches. (Patch 1 and 2 from the Japanese version, which contain less content than 3 and 4, would be combined.) Making for an even more bitter pill is that by charging for the DLC, we would be unable to include Cheburashka (and even offering him for free wouldn’t have guaranteed the license extended out to North America indefinitely). The above details aren’t set in stone, but it is the most likely plan if we do localize the DLC.

You can read the entire Tumblr post here. Would you hold out a little longer to play Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns if it meant adding downloadable content? Would you rather just receiving the base version of the game when it launches on February 28th? Let us know what you think in the comments below, or head over to our Facebook or Twitter page to discuss.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, check out our hands-on preview of the game here.