Man; these last few days have been eventful, haven't they? Right off the heels of Capcom's announcements today; publisher PQube has confirmed a western release for Steins;Gate on both PS3 and Playstation Vita in 2015. And, yes, both these versions are coming to North America and Europe - with even a potential physical release seemingly in the cards. This follows the initial western release earlier this year on PC.
The relevant portion of the press release for the announcement is as follows;
MAGES., 5pb. and Science Adventure Team’s critically acclaimed STEINS;GATE will be coming to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita systems in 2015, for both Europe and North America.Now, I'm not that big of a fan of Visual Novels - but I've enjoyed the ones that I've played. Granted, most of them haven't been straight-out Visual Novels and nothing else - but rather titles with Visual Novel elements, like the Ace Attorney and BlazBlue series. Regardless; Steins Gate's reputation precedes it - and I can't help but get excited at using the title as a foray into the world of Visual Novels proper. I mentioned earlier in yesterdays SaGa 2015 announcement post that the Vita has increasingly become a platform for indies and jRPG's - which is true - but with this announcement, I must amend that statement - as the system seems to have become a welcome home for Visual Novels as well. Titles such as Zero's Last Reward and Xblaze: Code Embryo (as well as its scheduled sequel!) have all found a release on the handheld; though it seems that as the PS3 secedes itself to the next generation of hardware, we're seeing a similar pattern on that front.
Either way; Visual Novels! In the west! With all this hubbub about them, I might have to check out our Playing Text series to see what I'm missing...
Do you think that Visual Novels will continue to find success on western shores?