Why is Tales of Crestoria Global Shutting Down & is it Closing in Japan?

Bandai Namco announced on December 7 that the global version of Tales of Crestoia will be shutting down.

Tales of Crestoria was first announced back in 2018, but the game ended up launching in 2020 due to delays and development issues with the pandemic. Tales of Crestoria is a unique game in how besides featuring an original party of protagonists created for the game, past Tales of games’ characters appear as an alternate version from the Tales of Crestoria world, with different stories and backgrounds.

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Is Tales of Crestoria closing down in Japan too?

Both the Japanese version and the Global version of Tales of Crestoria announced on December 7 they will be closing down on February 7, 2022, at 14:00 JST / midnight EST. This isn’t one of these scenarios where only the Global version is closing down.

Why is Tales of Crestoria closing?

Tales of Crestoria had many bugs at launch, however, producer Tomomi Tagawa and her team did their best to fix the game over the months. Despite its disastrous launch, the game actually stayed afloat for over a year.

The mobile market is highly competitive and some games don’t even reach a full year of longevity. The problem lies with how studios are rushed by higher-ups or shareholders to release their games, resulting in bugged and unfinished games being released. It’s even more blatant when seeing cases such as Love Plus Every, which was released unfinished right before Konami’s financials results, and then went into extended maintenance for days before being re-launched and ultimately shutting down only a few months later.

However, the mobile market is still the biggest video games market in Asia and Japan. And many Japanese fans don’t have the same negative bias against gacha / sociage / mobile games that many USA and European fans have. So game companies can’t ignore the mobile market and will keep making mobile games. Meanwhile, other markets such as the PC visual novel market is shrinking. This was explained pretty well by Key’s co-founder Maeda Jun when announcing mobile game Heaven Burns Red, launching in February 2022 in Japan.

It’ll be interesting to see if the mobile industry changes in a few years after Genshin and especially Uma Musume. Cygames took years to launch its horse racing x bishoujo raising game but it was a full package at launch without a plethora of bugs. This is one of the reasons why Uma Musume is now the most popular mobile game in Japan.

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The other Tales of mobile games in Japan

With the recent release of Tales of Luminaria, many fans expected Tales of Crestoria would be closed down as the latest and least popular mobile game in the franchise. It’s important to note however that Tales of already has several mobile games running and working pretty well in Japan, Tales of Asteria and Tales of The Rays. So Crestoria could have kept running simultaneously too if it was more successful.

I personally wouldn’t be surprised if Tales of Luminaria ended up closing itself in only a year either. As its launch could be considered to have been worse than Crestoria‘s. I might tell you more if time permits in a dedicated story.

Personally speaking, I’ll miss Tales of Crestoria. It’s always a shame when a mobile game closes down and its assets and story elements are lost forever. Unless fans organize themselves to create backups. Or if an offline version is released, which sadly isn’t the case of Crestoria.

Tales of Crestoria also actually featured chara designs from the series’ iconic character designers Fujishima Kousuke and Inomata Mutsumi. Which sadly isn’t the case of either Tales of Luminaria, featuring chara designs by Shoukugeki no Soma‘s Tosh, or Tales of Arise which is handled by Iwamoto Minoru.

New Tales of Crestoria project teased by writer Jun Kumagai (Update)

Soon after the game’s shutdown was announced, Crestoria‘s writer Jun Kumagai mentioned that the game’s story will be completed in another form and that this new project, which he’s involved in, is already underway. Tales of series producer Yusuke Tomizawa said the same thing. Keep in mind this doesn’t necessarily mean a new game. A manga or novel is more likely to happen.