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kupomogli on 07 April 2013
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How about a rough estimate about the cost to produce a game? No idea how many hours they spent on the game what they did, play testing, etc, but just making some guesses.

Cost per game. Box/inserts. $5
Translation/inputting text. 300 hours at $20 an hour.
Play testing English version. 500 hours at $20 an hour.
Voice actors. 800 hours at $20 an hour

So the Tales games sell more than 200,000 on average in the west. Let's just make that the amount shipped. We'll throw a number that's a little high, but still gives breathing room on how much they could make potentially with going over on shipping costs. $500,000. That means $3 a game, but these games are small and most will be shipped together and delivered together, cutting costs way down.

So at 200,000 it's $1,000,000, cost of shipping is $500,000, and other costs equal $32,000. I mentioned $20 an hour since programmers make about $50,000 a year, why not translators, voice actors, etc. While it's taking quite awhile for the game to come out, I doubt it's being worked on the majority of the time so potential time frame of the game multiplied by a certain amount or by a certain amount of people. But anyways, $1,532,000 would be the cost for the localization, plus shipping and manufacturing of the first 200,000 games.

If the game was to release at $40 MSRP, $10 would go to the store, $10 would go to Sony, and $20 would go to Namco Bandai. If they sold atleast 100,000 at full MSRP, more than half of the average amount, they'd make $2,000,000, covering their losses and making an additional $400,000 with another 100,000 copies left to sell.

Maybe as a multibillion dollar company, Namco Bandai thinks $500,000 to three million isn't worth satisfying potential fans, then again, why release the games in Japan if it wasn't worth the money. Development costs probably ate away whatever extra they actually sold in Japan. They'd probably make just as much in the US.

Maybe Namco Bandai hates the US isn't so far fetched after all?