There was a time when Level-5 was pretty darn hot; the Professor Layton series developed a devoted following, and there was a major sales breakthrough when Yo-kai Watch took off in Japan and was rolled out globally; more recently the development side of the business earned praise for its Ni no Kuni titles, too. The publisher / developer's localisation teams also had strong moments, and the world got to enjoy the zany soccer antics of the Inazuma Eleven series.
Unfortunately there have been concerning indications of problems at Level-5 for some time, especially for its business outside of Japan. Talk of a staff exodus started in late 2018, and the company's output has included a number of delay announcements; it seems localisation out of Japan will be heavily dependent on deals with partners, too, as Level-5 has reportedly reduced its America-based operations to a skeleton crew. It's clear, from the varied and consistent reports, that the company is facing challenging times, or at the very least may have significantly downsized.
Which, sadly, brings us to the latest update on Inazuma Eleven: Great Road of Heroes (or Inazuma Eleven: Heroes' Great Road as it was previously known). Originally planned for 2019, then 2020, it was confirmed by company CEO Akihiro Hino late last week that it's now planned for a 2023 release in Japan. In the video update he explains various plans (thanks, Gematsu) such as including a full solo experience as well as a significant online play component. The video features some footage, though the game will no doubt change over the next couple of years.
It's a meaty delay, though perhaps we should be appreciative of an honest appraisal in pushing it back so far. That said, this title has clearly had a difficult development process to date, as four years will have elapsed from its original target launch to the planned 2023 arrival. Then, of course, we have the waiting game to see if it gets a Western release.
[source gematsu.com]
Comments 20
shame but dont think it will ever see light of day. but level 5 so many great games they didnt bring west and a heap of their games would run on the switch and sell
Things aren't looking good for Level 5, a complete skip of 2021 and 2022 after an intial release date of 2019 plus their standards have fallen for key titles like Layton makes me worried about not seeing them find their mojo again.
Football cyberpunk
The fact that a freaking soccer game needs to skip the next year pretty much indicates this the game will likely be canceled. Especially since it was supposed to come out 2 years ago
Wow, that’s a long delay... not good signs really
Wonder if all their available developers will be working on this or will Level 5 rely on Switch ports of the Professor Layton games to bring some money in.
Not a great sign for the company as let's be honest, this doesn't look like a game that should need much more than a year's development time, so for it to be delayed a further 2 years...
@jump
Add in the loss of its American AKA English localization studio as well as other franchises of Level-5 such as Yo-Kai Watch being in limbo (Western release announced but not a single sign it's actualy coming out) and the studio shutting down in the near future has become a somewhat likely scenario.
Doesn't really surprise me, givent hat these dudes go all-in on trying to make everything they crap out into some sorta cultural phenomenon. Like, think about it, they have: Layton, Inazuma, Snack World, Yo-Kai Watch, and Little Battlers, all of those are franchises with loads of spin-off media, even toys and the like. They've tried to milk them all to hell and back.
Very sad, Inazuma Eleven is one of my favourite series, put over 50 hours in the first DS game and loved the 3DS ones. I can only hope they can turn this around, but man I thought Level 5 was invincible, doubt this will ever get a English release, maybe in Europe? One can hope, but I think Yo-Kai Watch is officially dead in the west!
I have been following Level 5 since Yokai Watch came out and they are financially a mess. Layton series gave them the fame and Yokai Watch was hype for several years, then everything they made (cartoon and games) in the last 5 years were failures. They should have concentrated on their good existing IP's rather then launching a new project every year.
Isn't this the show with the despicable me crossover?
EDIT: Yes, yes it is
Not a good sign. I've been trying to collect all the Professor Layton games ever since the announcement that Level-5 was pulling out of North America. They have many decent IPs and have earned my respect, but I also realize that they've had more than their fair share of problems for awhile.
I really want Level-5 to turn things around. I think they are a fantastic developer. On top of the games mentioned, they've also made some amazing Dragon Quest games, Fantasy Life, which is in my top 3 favourite games of all time, Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy are also fantastic.
I can’t understand how this great studio went so far with Yo-Kai Watch on 3DS in the west. I completely get why they would localise the first game because it was a cultural phenomenon in Japan and they are pretty good RPGs with interesting character designs but I still see the first game on online game retailers for less than £5 and Argos has cleared most of their 3DS games including Mario Kart 7 and 3D Land and they can’t get rid of it now at the price of £0.99 (seriously go and check).
So they obviously either produced far too many physical copies or it flopped tremendously. They then released the sequel quickly after with two versions (which only Pokemon can get away with as they invented that release model and people are used to it) when the franchise wasn’t popular enough in the west to support it and launched a third version less than a year later in Europe which didn’t add nearly enough content to warrant a third release.
They released Blasters in two versions when the main series was already unpopular and the 3DS was on its way out so localising a spin-off was a poor choice. Then bringing over the third game without marketing it at all at the end of the system’s life with barely any physical copies produced at all and being a scalper’s paradise to the small base of fans who couldn’t get a hold of one was stupid all around. Yet they were simultaneously smart enough to ditch the three version approach and combine the contents of the three Japanese versions into one package: baffling stuff. They pretty much hung their hat on the franchise and mass-produced as much merchandise and as manysequels as possible with an untested IP in the west and while you can respect their confidence, it was a risk that didn’t pay off in the end.
It’s a shame to see their struggles with home console development now as I loved Fantasy Life and Professor Layton and it seems they can’t release or localise much of anything independently: this football game probably won’t ever see the light of day which is a shame with a meaty delay to 2023: such a talented developer. I thought they merged with Comcept who developed Mighty no. 9 to continue that series and port it to handhelds which never happened, maybe that did further damage.
Ouch. We would be lucky at all if Level-5 makes it to 2023, let alone this game. I wouldn't be shocked if they are looking for a buyout behind the scenes.
Woah, that's some delay. Enjoyed the DS games so this is a shame.
I was hoping to give this one an actual shot. But I dont know if I'll be as keen to play it in two years from now. Such a shame...
At this point the only scenario I see where this actually releases is one where Level-5 gets acquired by one of the big three.
It's now October 2023 and after another two name changes, the game's release date is STILL unknown.
Tap here to load 20 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...