Bandai Namco announced on December 7 that the global version ofTales of Crestoiawill be shutting down.
Tales of Crestoriawas first announced back in 2018, but the game ended up launching in 2020 due to delays and development issues with the pandemic.Tales of Crestoriais a unique game in how besides featuring an original party of protagonists created for the game, pastTales ofgames' characters appear as an alternate version from theTales of Crestoriaworld, with different stories and backgrounds.
IsTales of Crestoriaclosing down in Japan too?
Both the Japanese version and the Global version ofTales of Crestoriaannouncedon December 7 they will be closing down on June 01, 2025, at 14:00 JST / midnight EST. This isn’t one of these scenarios where only the Global version is closing down.
Why isTales of Crestoriaclosing?
Tales of Crestoriahad 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 asLove 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 gameHeaven Burns Red, launching in February 2022 in Japan.
It’ll be interesting to see if the mobile industry changes in a few years afterGenshinand especiallyUma 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 whyUma Musumeis now the most popular mobile game in Japan.
Tales of Asteria
Tales of The Rays
The otherTales ofmobile games in Japan
With the recent release ofTales of Luminaria,many fans expectedTales of Crestoriawould be closed down as the latest and least popular mobile game in the franchise. It’s important to note however thatTalesof already has several mobile games running and working pretty well in Japan,Tales of AsteriaandTales of The Rays.SoCrestoriacould have kept running simultaneously too if it was more successful.
I personally wouldn’t be surprised ifTales of Luminariaended up closing itself in only a year either. As its launch could be considered to have been worse thanCrestoria’s. I might tell you more if time permits in a dedicated story.
Personally speaking, I’ll missTales 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 ofCrestoria.
Tales of Crestoriaalso actually featured chara designs from the series' iconic character designers Fujishima Kousuke and Inomata Mutsumi. Which sadly isn’t the case of eitherTales of Luminaria,featuring chara designs byShoukugeki no Soma’s Tosh, orTales of Arisewhich is handled by Iwamoto Minoru.
NewTales of Crestoriaproject 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 ofseries 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.
