Tales of Grace f boss Hideo Baba has taken the time to explain why Western audiences always have to wait so long for Japanese games to make the trip overseas.

Baba expressed his interest in closing the gap between regions, and hopes that future Tales games will release around the same time. Tales of Graces f released in Japan back in 2010 and only made it to the West this year.

Requests from U.S. or European branches have to be made, “before we can decide to bring something to the Western markets,” said Baba. While there were no initial plans to bring Tales of Graces f to the West, the game’s success in Japan caused Namco to make a late decision, which resulted in a long localization time. Baba hopes that Namco will let the team know which games are going to get localized from the beginning in future because, “our Japanese team need to keep working creating new titles. While we were finishing Tales of Grace f we were already starting Tales of Xillia. So we’re always really busy.”

Baba finished by mentioning that fan requests also play an important role in the decision to localize as, “the end users of the games are the fans, and our local branches hear them through Twitter or Facebook and take it into their decisions.”

Should more Japanese games get localized?