Aion's release date expected for fall 2009

by Seraphina Brennan Feb 19th 2009 at 3:30PM

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Aion, Launches, News items

Localization is big, time consuming business, and NCsoft wants to make sure that they get it just right with the release of Aion: The Tower of Eternity. The US community manager, Liv, has just confirmed that NCsoft is seeking a fall 2009 launch date for the Western copy of the game that has already seen success in Korea.

The game is undergoing a significant re-write of all of the narrative content instead of being simply translated and pushed out the door. What this should produce is a game without the standard awkward mistranslated phrases, incomplete sentences, and dialogue that doesn't word wrap properly.

This style of localization is common amongst recent games that have crossed over into Western culture, such as the Megami Tensei Series and Odin Sphere from Atlus Games. It's more extensive and time consuming, but produces much better results in the long term.

For all of the questions and insights Liv has provided to the Aion audience, check out her full letter and note from the producer at the European Aion website.

Tags: aion, aion-the-tower-of-eternity, breaking, launch-date, liv, localization, megaten, ncsoft, odin-sphere

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Lemmo said on 3:38PM 2-19-2009

While I'm impatient to actually take this game out for a spin, I'm glad to see it's doing well in Korea, and I expect it'll have a fair amount of polish by the time it hits our shores.

starzzareblind said on 3:51PM 2-19-2009

Liv has done a good job communicating with the North American community, so far. I'm glad to see Aion is getting a full re-write, and in the process will be growing and being polished for when it launches in Europe & the Americas. It's wildly successful over in Korea, so hopefully that success will be shown over here as well.

Henry said on 7:33PM 2-19-2009

Fall, huh? While I'm glad they're taking the time to polish their game, the fall and winter quarters typically see the year's biggest games, and with holiday shopping to be done and everyone already tightening their belts, can Aion survive?

Jack said on 12:10AM 2-20-2009

Still not care much about this game....

Matthew said on 5:22AM 3-31-2009

I can understand the re-write of the game but shouldn't have they already gotten a head start on that ? I mean really, they should of had a team writing it in English text and form so we would understand the story at the same time as I they did in Korean. Kill two birds with one stone. Or maybe I'm really far off here and not sure what I'm talking about. All I have to say is I thought it was gonna be mid quarter for release but now they saying fall? I can tell you this I'm losing interest in the game and if it's not out by fall I don't think I'll even give it another look. Mortal starting to look tempting ... Stop pushing us around and give us a real answer on the release date! Stop changing it and leading us on. (lol sorry for my rant just tired of only seeing three little letters for their release date "TBD".)

Davi said on 12:40PM 4-03-2009

Hello everyone.i come to here just want to know when the Aion will release in UK.i am Chinese,but i wanna play this game with u are.and i do not know how to get the client.if anyone know can u tell me? my E-mail is chendengning@hotmail.com.thank u very much.Looking forward........