Professor Layton Dev Level-5 Has No Plans For Future Games Outside Of Japan, Says Report

That’s a real, real shame. I’ve loved a lot of their output in the past, especially the DS days with Layton, Inazuma Eleven and Dragon Quest IX.

I've had my fingers crossed for Switch remakes of the Professor Layton saga, ever since I got my Switch in 2017... Man, I love that series. Reading this makes me forfeit every little hope I still had left

I never cared much for their games myself, but that is a massive loss if true.

Noooo... Professor Layton is one of my favorite series. This is terrible.

I will not rest until yokai watch 4

Does the american branch do the european localisations or is the USA the only country “outside of japan”?

Nintendo could do the localizations themselves for Switch.

Remember that they do that for a number of popular third party titles.

Well, this ain't good... =(

I quite like a few of Level-5's games.

Is Level-5 not doing well financially? Or do they just think it's not worth it to localize their games?

Sad times. They've released some great games over the years, with Professor Layton being a favourite of mine.

They've been on a downwards slope lately, me thinks.

Aww, but they are a good developer.

And yes, we were promised a localization of Yo-kai Watch 4, but it seems less and less likely. I mean sure, it only came out over a year ago in Japan, and Yo-kai Watch 1 for example was localized over 2 years after it came out in Japan, but you pretty much don't hear about the series anymore, and as far as I know, it's not as popular in Japan as it once was either. It's a shame though, it's a charming, fun series.

and no proper ending to the Layton saga. I just want a sequel to unwound future, that is all.

I was hoping for a fantasy life sequel/port for switch but It seems even more unlikely than it was before ); level 5 has a decent amount of games I do enjoy, really hope they figure this out

Damn. I was really hoping for a new Rogue Squadron too.

Been waiting on Megaton Musashi for years now and it seems like its not gonna happen now maybe

Seeing how bad that Town Game was that came out, and how Yokai was met with apathy, AND the fact a lot of other games like Layton get ported from mobile AND price hiked- it’s not really surprising.

I wonder if their business model fits on anything other than the DS and Mobile, and if they’ve suffered with the competition indies are giving them in that tier of games.

@MrGawain Town was Game Freak, not Level-5

I feel like my heart has been stabbed by a loved one

Never got the chance to play Yokai Watch, I was hoping 4 would be localised so I could finally play one. Looks like that isn't going to happen anytime soon. That's a bummer...

Wouldn't be surprised if it was partly due to the current administration's attempts to attack anything that doesn't originate from the US. There's a lot less profit for smaller studios to bring things over themselves. Doesn't mean another company couldn't get the rights to translate the games though.

Whatever the troubles, good luck to Level 5, hope to see them back at full power soon.

That is virtually tragic to read! I have truly loved a fair few of their game serieses & individual games. Probably no real bad ones. They're top class. Argh!

If that's the case I really hope they won't make a professor Layton ever again...because I won't want to miss out!

This is pretty sad to hear. I kinda grew out of the Layton games but I did enjoy the first 3 games back on DS. Good luck to Level 5 on whatever they try to do.

The Layton Series...
... Fantasy Life...
...on DS & 3DS they had a lot of great games!

Maybe Nintendo will keep publishing some of their games.

That’s disheartening news; love their games and was hopeful they would offer some remasters on Switch... Pity.

Noooo!!! Layton is one of my favorite series and I’ve always hoped for a return to form for the series... and I still had a shred of hope we’d see a new Fantasy Life title, too... this year has been so crappy, can’t we have some good news for once?

It would be a bummer if true (although not necessarily last forever - there was a time when Enix games lost their localisation branch as well, only to bounce back a few years later), but we're still dealing with "multiple sources familiar with the matter" yet again.

Like many others I was a bit fan of their work.
But from the 3ds era onwards I feel like it's been a bit too kiddie focused. I mean - what have they put out other than Snack World, Yokai Watch and inazuma 11 in recent years? All play quite young i think.

I also think they were a bit too focused on trying to be the next Pokémon...

@Zoda_Fett this.
Fantasy Life was a fun cute little distraction. It’s not the greatest ARPG in the world but it’s got a lot of charm.

Well, that massively sucks. Level-5 has been behind so many great titles.

Also sucks for Yokai Watch fans. I wasn't interested in the previous games, but was heavily considering giving the ambitious fourth game in the series a go.

No surprise, Level-5 was struggling financially before Covid-19. I suppose we'll never get western releases for Yo-kai Watch 4, Inazuma Eleven Great Road of Heroes, or Megaton Musashi then.

IMO that most likely just means that games which do come over will be handled by separate publishers and not level-5 themselves. This has already been the case for many of their games, like Yokai Watch.

Sounds like Level-5 is ripe for a buyout. Maybe Sony could swoop in, purchase Level-5 and give us Dark Cloud 3?

I wonder if Level 5 itself is winding down. Not much scheduled to come out.
Yo-kai Watch never caught on and Inazuma Eleven has a dedicated core audience but not wide appeal.
Plus, if you add English your games, you call worldwide without having to fully localize through Japanese on-line shops.

I have to wonder if Yo-kai Watch would have been more successful if they hadn't staggered the Western releases so much.

By the time the games came to Europe and Australasia people had forgotten all about the game and the reviews meaning both the US and non-US launches had less hype all around.

I think Nintendo needs to step up and get involved in this situation. Since, about March of this year, the Nintendo Switch has sold 61,440,000 units while North America sold around 22,130,000 units and Europe was comparable. So, around 45 million outside of Japan and around 16 million units for Japan. That means that about 75% of the Nintendo Switch sales are outside of Japan.

I am quite frankly sick of not seeing a game come out for Europe and North America and only Japan. With a Level 5 being a great company with many great IP's, there should be no reason to cut off 75% of Nintendo Switch users from these wonderful games. I believe Nintendo should help software companies by setting up a small company to help translate big named company games to the rest of the world. Nintendo makes a crap ton of money and this would help your Nintendo Switch owners outside of Japan. Just my two cents though.

real shame loved the level 5 games

No one has mentioned Ni No Kuni yet. That is one of my favorite RPGs of all time, so I will be very sad if this is true.

Bummer. I really love level-5 games. Fantasy life is my most played 3ds game. I bought physical copies of ni no kuni (double dip), and snack world for switch. Megaton musashi looks promising, and like others have said, I was probably going to jump into Yo-Kai watch 4. Hopefully someone else handles the localizations

@DanteSolablood I have been following Level 5 for several years now as a big fan of Yokai Watch and I can tell you it's the fault of their company entirely. They expanded too fast , thinned and stressed out their development team due to development of entirely unnecessary IP's. It's literally a bad decision after another and another...the last one being their new Yokai Academy Y anime which was again badly received in Japan.

Maybe Nintendo should buy Level-5 and release their games globally.

Why though? Did their games sell so poorly abroad? I don't understand.

I doubt Nintendo would buy them or publish their games. If anything, Microsoft might scoop them up to increase their Japanese developer lineup.

Dragon Quest 8, 9 and the Layton games are some of my favourites. Kinda hoped that they would make Dragon Quest XII..

No, I love (most of) the Layton games! I hope if they make more they'll find their way over here.

This might be the worst news I have ever heard. I am gutted. It's a company that I have purchased so many games from. Damn, I might have to improve my Japanese...

Attack of the Friday Monsters was one of the most beautiful, melancholy, nostalgic games I've ever played. I am legitimately sad we'll be losing the company that made it. First Alpha Dream, now this ((((((

Darn shame, there goes another piece of DS-quirky-weirdness I really enjoyed the Layton games. I hope they'll come back someday or that someone else decides to pick up their games. I already feel that the Switch, despite it's success, has killed of a particular set of niche games that found success on the DS and replaced them with (definitely great) western indie games, as a kind of Steam-Best-Of.

It was probably inevitable, but still a loss that is truly felt.

@woke well.... didn’t that actually end the series... on a really sad note Btw?

Spoilers

By having Luke leave the Professor’s side? I mean... that is an ending. A really sad one.
That game still makes me shed a manly tear.

@GrailUK are you thinking of Factor 5?

Level-5 retail software sales in Japan:
> 2013: 1.51 million
> 2014: 6.27 million
> 2015: 2.96 million
> 2016: 2.71 million
> 2017: 1.12 million
> 2018: 0.46 million
> 2019: 0.43 million
> 2020: <0.10 million thus far

That's a darn shame honestly; really like the Layton series despite getting burned out on it by the sixth game and was hoping at least the first three DS games would get remastered ports on the Switch but that seems pretty unlikely now if they're not even releasing their games outside of Japan anymore.

@nilcam I was being silly

Another dev that I'd love to see Nintendo acquire. They've made a metric butt-ton of games for Nintendo and their handhelds--why watch them go under, dudes? Buy those guys up and port all of their stuff to the Switch; I'll buy just about all of it.

While you're at it, have them make Dark Cloud 3 for the Switch--that'd be a game changer over in this neck of the woods.

Now you know how us Yo-Kai Watch fans feel! Level-5 shutting us all out...

If true, this is a crying shame. An acquaintance got me into the Professor Layton games, and it's now one of my favorite puzzle series of all time; I've only played the original trilogy so far but do intend to get to the prequels and Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy in the future. The end of Unwound Future is one of the best endings I've witnessed in a video game.

I also like what I've played of the Yo-kai Watch series, although the battle system in the first two games was hit or miss. (Never got to the third on 3DS since I learned too late that its print run was extremely limited). As for Ni No Kuni, I've heard excellent things and intend to get the game on Switch, but I don't own it yet.

Level-5 clearly needs the publishing support of some an outside party (Nintendo, Bandai Namco) in order to release their games outside of Japan.

Level-5 should have let Nintendo localize Yokai Watch 4 for the western markets this year, ideally in late April/early May or August when there were no other big game releases for Switch.

Instead, the company may never release games outside of Japan ever again.

Oof.

Nintendo used to release Layton and other Level-5 games internationally. Perhaps now that Level-5’s own international offices are shutting down, they will be first party games again.

@westman98
Yowsers! Retail is taking a pretty hard hit all over the world.

Disappointed, though I'm not completely surprised. Other than Layton, their games have always felt like they can't find their niche. Like, Atlus isn't a huge juggernaut, but they've very effectively forged a reputation in the market as THE developers of RPG's that cater to a hardcore audience. Basically the modern version of what Square used to be.

Level-5, on the other hand, caters to... who? They mostly make RPG's, but more geared towards a broader market, which they also put in minimal effort to market to. The games they make are good quality, I'm especially a fan of the Ni No Kuni games, but I often feel Level 5 games have an identity crisis where they can't quite figure out who they want to appeal to. Especially in an industry so rife with excellent alternatives, it's tough to run a sustainable business on that kind of identity indecision.

I really hope yokai watch 4 is still coming because 3 left a really sour taste in my mouth.

@SwitchVogel You said everything I wanted to. i also felt like Lv5 had expectations for all their properties to become juggernauts in the west and settled for no less, when in reakity much of what made them work was Japanese in an obtuse way. Nobody was impressed when Satoru Shibata did the Gera Gera Po dance to convince people that Yo-Kai Watch was this Japanese phenomenon

Oh man, that's terrible news. Maybe Nintendo should buy Level-5? I think they could work pretty well on Nintendo IPs and at the same time their original IPs would be a good addition to the Nintendo family...

Nintendo needs to be a big brother and help out it's fellow japanese company. Buy them up and have them make games for nintendo.

i don't want to be mean but i think it's not a big deal. the recent games they published just weren't to the same quality of previous one and i suspect they didn't sell well here.
i always thought ni no kuni was superior to ni no kuni 2. nnk2 felt like it was a ripoff of recent tales games in its combat and it felt overly generic in comparison to the first.
i also heard they are struggling with yokai watch...

@Grahamthecracker completely agree. The charm shined even brighter when you played with friends!

I honestly do not understand this move..the level5 must have profits from their successful games that they have produced.

So this means no Professor Layton on switch. There was talks about it ages ago having Curious village ported to it

I don’t think Nintendo buys companies. Maybe Sony should swoop in. Microsoft has been on a spending spree so maybe it could be Sony’s turn?

It's likely their games haven't been selling well outside Japan. The fact Snack World sucked couldn't have helped, but I was looking forward to Yo Kai Watch 4. Ah well.

No Yo-Kai then 😭😭😭

Aw sad. I just bought Snack World. I really enjoyed some of Level-5's non-Yokai Watch properties.

@noobish_hat
Professor Layton is one of the best-selling 3rd party game franchises on the NDS.

The issue is that the franchise collapsed on the 3DS and never recovered.

I feel like possibilities are endless with level 5 games but i also feel their games have a 1 or 2 systems too many, but i feel that way with most games though.

I like that their games often are hybrids of many concepts. Lbx is my most favorite level 5 game though it didnt go down so well. I like their creativity, I would have liked a different arpg like a musou with lbx and Yokai

This is terrible...they are one of the most unique studios out there. They are like the Studio Ghibli of videogames. Such a shame. I hope Nintendo (or Sony) buys them just to keep them alive

A true gentleman must take crushing news and speculation gracefully. Eh, guess I'm not a gentleman. Ugh!!

Like others said, it seems like Level 5 as company has struggled in the past few years to match the breakout titles they enjoyed through the late 2000s. They seem have hit the rut of stretching previous series out beyond being profitable. I was honestly shocked when Yo-Kai 3 got such a limited US release. I remember picking it up from Best Buy and the cashier stating he had been on the outlook for a copy for his son and they were nowhere to be found ( and seemingly did not get reprinted).

@Low I think the prices on both yokai watch blasters game became inflated really quick.

@Bermanator @Dman10 Nintendo has bought few companies... but it has ........ Monolith Soft and ND Cube ... and in a way Next Level Games

Nintendo should help with the localization of Yo kai Watch 4.

They must feel under-appreciated by sales figures. Something about having to announce this just screams of over compensation for having their feelings hurt.

Most companies would just make games for Japan and see if anyone wants to pick up the translation, or help them publish to NA. Not just call it out of the question.

My list of head scratchers. Scratching my head because I can't figure out why we're not seeing games in these series' being released:
-The Layton series
-Mario & Luigi series
-Chibi Robo series
-NES Remix series (& SNES Remix, 64 Remix, etc)
-F-Zero series
-Kid Icarus series
-Fantasy Life series
-FF Crystal Chronicles My Life as a King/Dark Lord series
-Real Star Fox series
-Mario Strikers series (my favourite Mario sports series)
-Advance Wars series (really the Wars series in general)
-Golden Sun series
-Warioware series (Warioland too)
-Mario vs/and Donkey Kong series
-Excitebike series
-Zelda Four Swords series
-...others...I'm sure

I'm not complaining. I'm just not sure why at least a few games have not come to the Switch from these series. Fingers crossed.

@Low I missed out on getting Yo-kai Watch 3 unfortunately. If I had known it would have a very limited print run, I would have pre-ordered the game. Typically I wait a bit before grabbing a game as they tend to drop in price. It backfired that time. Unfortunately, like both Yo-kai Watch Blasters games, the prices of new and used copies are insanely inflated. There's always digital I suppose, but my SD card is almost full and I don't wish to invest in a larger one for my 3DS.

It makes me wonder if Level 5 and Nintendo experienced a bit of a falling out. Yokai 3 being based on a more United States style town and being a limited initial release with no reprints reeks of a publisher fulfilling a contract and wanting to move on. The 3DS market was in decline at this time but there was little doubt additional runs of product could have sold out. Yokai’s ultimate failure in the US (game copies at $5 below, Dollar Tree flooded with merchandise) seemed to make Nintendo move toward brushing it off.

@doctorhino Wrong... Excite trucks and Excite bots on the Wii

@papermarioamiibo you should add Rhythm Heaven games, we need more entries.
As well as Battalion Wars

I have bought every Layton game after the first one on release day and played these with my misses, and thoroughly enjoyed Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch on Switch. Understandably I will be devastated if this means no localization will happen at all for these two awesome and unique franchises...

Now that's depressing... it's bad enough Alphadream went bankrupt, but let's face it, Nintendo will probably make a new Mario and Luigi game eventually. But Yo-Kai Watch? Who else is going to publish that? I'm legitimately really upset about this...

On the topic of Yokai watch 4 and the no news is that we also had the the Yokai Watch 4++ edition released not too long ago so they might and went ahead on working on that instead same with Yokai Watch 3 that got released with its enhanced port.

Aw this is sad. Level-5 has made some fantastic games. The Layton series and Fantasy Life are some of my all-time favorites.

@Xylnox I think Level 5 is already struggling domestically too. If anything, Nintendo might need to step in and buy them at this rate.

@NGNYS Even the big companies used to struggle with localization it almost impossible for a small publisher to find people fluent in Japanese outside of Japan who are willing to localize their games. It's a shockingly underrated language in the global market despite Japanese pop culture's megalithic popularity internationally. I am actually taking Japanese because of this fact. Plenty of people know English, Spanish, and Chinese so there is a surprising need for people who know other popular languages in some industries.

Already got a Japanese copy of Yokai Watch 4 (the regular edition), but I suppose a localization would've been for the ++ version, so it still would be an upgrade to get that one.

I hope it's a case that nis America, xseed or marvelous picks up a deal to localise them because if there's a new ni no kuni that comes out that doesn't come west I woul be devastated

This is very sad. Where's Atlus West when you need them?

@NIN10DOXD do you know any good places to learn Japanese right now outside of school or an app that charges you after 3 minutes? I would love to learn the language so I can avoid things like this.

Or at least a course that charges but is more reliable than the apps.

@Xylnox I mean, to be fair, there's a whole load of games in English only that is in accessable to Japan and other Asian countries. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 only just got a Korean translation this year.

After the travesty that was Katrielle Layton I can’t really blame them. I just wanted to know if my prediction about the story was correct though.

@Friendly Neither of those games were published in the US by Level 5, this wouldn't affect games like Ni No Kuni and Professor Layton.

Honestly, this is really non-news, or potentially good news as I'd much rather see Level 5 continue doing Professor Layton instead of trying to do a spin-off (Katrielle) - which was done specifically so they could release their own games in the US w/o a publisher (NOA owns the Professor Layton publishing rights in the US).
Snack World and Fantasy Life (NOA owns US publishing) are in the same boat.

So, potential good news is that we could see a proper Professor Layton game b/c of this news.

@doctorhino Excitebike: World Rally on Wii was tremendous. It's sad that one isn't downloadable any more. Lots of fun!

@cyrus_zuo oh man I totally overlooked that game. Too late now I guess...

@Low I pre-ordered Yokai Watch 3 for my son and I was glad I did as it became very hard to find after its original release. He still has it, but honestly, never finished it. We both completed the first one (I really enjoyed it) and he played the second one. He said that the third game felt "too much the same" as the other ones. I felt that way about the second game and quit playing it. I really like the Layton games but never got through the last one because again, they started to all feel the same. I think that is Level-5's curse.

I'm honestly quite gutted, Level-5 was one of the most important game dev studios to me growing up. From the ps2 to the 3ds they always made games that could make this idiot smile. I hope this isn't the end of their story in non-JP markets

@GilbertXI
I started learning japanese using Genki, the books are expensive but in used condition you could get a decent deal.
The free to use website Glosor.eu was good for memorising all the new words. Plus there is a rather good game for ds, My Japanese Coach, or at least I think it was called something like that...
Other than that, chatting with people in japanese VRChat worlds can be really effective. (You don't need VR to play the game and it's free)
Good luck

@Naoto-chi ok thanks! I'm busy right now with other things, but I'll definitely check it out.

@Screen ok I'm interested now. What was your prediction about the story?

@GilbertXI That is true but even the console itself and some biggest games are all from Nintendo, in Japan.

That is a good point though, that I did not think of. Thank you.

@NIN10DOXD Ya, Nintendo would be wise to get Level 5. A lot of people outside of Japan, love their games.

@Naoto-chi When you go into those Japanese VR Worlds, are the Japanese stuck there and have to live their whole lives there? You know, Sword Art Online or Log Horizon.

I don't want Ni No Kuni games to become Japan only...

I can't imagine the US Not being profitable to them. Considering their fanbase, myself included it just blows my mind.

I really hope this isn't true! If it is... I better start learning Japanese!

@GilbertXI I second Genki. There textbook and Workbook are used in Universities and they include audio.

In CY2014, Level-5 games accounted for over 24% of all 3DS software sold in Japan that year.

In CY2019, Level-5 games accounted for below 2% of all Switch software sold in Japan last year. That percentage will dip well below 1% in CY2020.

It's depressing to see a once-juggernaut company fall from grace this badly.

I guess now I'll never get the Bugs vs Tanks sequel I always dreamed of. (I am still confused why they decided to make you a Nazi in that game).

This is sad to see, but not at all surprising. They have got to be one of the worst mismanaged studios around. They went from a legacy of solid titles to trying to chase Pokemon Company and vowing to surpass pokemon. They tried to become a Multimedia empire focused on tv and merchandise in just a few years and then decided to go deep deep down the mobile gatcha model and declared the future was in mobile, put all their eggs in one basket and abandoned their large format games.

They spread as thin as they could chasing every trend as a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow trying to become the next big thing as fast as possible. It's like they just listened to whatever the analysts told them and went that way without thinking about their core business. They've put out little too nothing of note since they started that little voyage. They've taken one of their most brilliant games in fantasy life and tried to shoehorn out into mobile gatcha. And had no real sequel of note. In doing so they lost all relevance in the west, and their only real relevance in Japan is their remaining mobile business. They banked on consoles failing when the analysts said it would and lost their foothold in it.

I imagine the Japanese division isn't too stable either. Retracting from an attempt at global expansion as a top brand down to your handful of domestically profitable products can't be a sign of stability.

Fantasy life remains one of my favorite games of all time. Animal crossing made better, in a way. But, then, that wasn't really level 5. Level 5 just remade what was made by Brownie Brown. Now 1Up, and part of nintendo. The real makers of fantasy life more recently have been involved in Mario odyssey, treasure tracker, ring fit, and......acnh. where fantasy life ideas were brought into animal crossing. 30+m copies later. While level 5 is on its last yen, seemingly.

@doctorhino I think there only way to get it would be on a used system that already had it, sadly.
I wish nintendo would make it easier to access gaming history .

Odds are that most of their games will be picked up by other localizers.

Fantasy Life will remain a one off hidden gem of gaming then! Such a shame, pretty much the reason I bought my wife a Switch hoping for more level 5 games. That said Snack World was a big disappointment and I wonder if the company had started to lose it's way.

@cyrus_zuo I'll just emulate it, looks like it's Dolphin compatible. This game looks really nice, the fact that you can't even buy it anymore means even if I wanted to be legit about it I couldn't so I don't feel too bad.

@GilbertXI

That the dog Sherl is actually Katrielle’s father Professor Layton.

@Xylnox Yes! It is more like Log Horizon than SAO, seeing that they can't really die and just respawn instead.

Just go into any Sakura/Shibuya world and you can find them all over the place, it's where they feel the most at home since they are stuck there...
While you're at it, tell them anything you have heard about from the outside world, they always appreciate hearing news from home.

@Naoto-chi hehe

This great company would have been very successful if they had simply asked an American person to give their games good names. Most of their games had names that sounded weird in English. Ni No Kuni, Yo-Kai Watch, Jeanne d'Arc, Little Battler's Experience and Inazuma Eleven are terrible names for the English-speaking market. Would it have killed them to name the game Joan of Ark? Little Battler's Experience probably sounds perfectly normal and even cool in Japanese, but translated into English it sounds very corny and uncool. Why are Japanese developers so reluctant to give an English-speaking person a hundred bucks to give their game a good name? They ruin their careers for such a stupid mistake.

That’s sad news and I was really hoping ni no kuni 2 would have come to the Switch!

I wouldn't be surprised if they reason we are loosing it is all the censorship.

@marandahir they gave up. They also got burned for doing that

1 year later and this still makes me sad. I left the Yo-kai Watch fandom almost two years ago and slowly started to lose interest after YW3 got localized and when 4 came out (In Japan Obviously). Still hope Hino makes a brand new American or International Divisor of LEVEL-5 one day