THE BUZZ: Unfortunately, right now is a bad time to be a Japanese PSP game hoping for English localization; the latest game to realize this harsh fact is Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles III.

During an interview recently in Singapore, Hiroshi Seno—team manager of console sales at Sega—stated that the company has no plans for an English-language release of the third chapter of the Valkyria Chronicles saga.

The reason? First is the issue with the PSP’s popularity in the West being harshly low. Also mentioned was the need for previous versions of the game to sell well in order to make bringing over Valkyria Chronicles III justifiable—sadly, Valkyria Chronicles II didn’t set sales charts on fire.

However, there is one glimmer of hope: Seno didn’t discount the idea of the game being offered as a downloadable release targeted at PS Vita owners. According to Seno, that decision will be made “the next time [Sega] meets with Sony”.

EGM’s TAKE: As a PSP fan and a lover of Japanese gaming, this really is one of the most tragic situations in the current generation of videogames. Not Valkyria Chronicles III specifically, but the amount of great PSP content that will more than likely never see release in the West. Hopefully companies like Sega will give games a try via digital distribution—even if that means, for some of them, the games staying totally in Japanese (in a similar fashion as the PS1 “Imports” releases on PSN). Games like Project Diva, for example, could be perfectly playable without any translation work done.

Source: Gamespot