Namco Bandai "extremely" confident in 2012 RPG lineup

Make no qualms about it: Namco Bandai's shooting straight for the RPG crown, with UK marketing boss Lee Kirton telling VG247 it's "extremely" confident on the publisher's role-playing lineup this year.

So far, within the past year, Namco's published Dark Souls for PS3 and 360 to critical and player acclaim. This year looks set to be one of the best RPG line-ups from the publisher in its history.

Its already released Tales of the Abyss on 3DS, with Tales of Graces F coming to European PS3s at some point this year and Tales of Xillia highly-speculated for a western release as well.

Not to mention, the release next week of The Witcher II for Xbox 360 from CD Projekt and the recent announcement of Dark Souls PC, out this August. And that's before the already stunning-looking Ni No Kuni on PS3 from Level 5 and Studio Ghibli in Q1 2013.

UK marketing boss Lee Kirton has told VG247 it's "extremely" confident in its portfolio of RPGs for this year and next, even hinting at further "surprises" for the Tales of series.

"We have the best portfolio of RPG titles and unique style," he said.

"Dark Souls has just been announced on PC, we are still working on the 360/PS3 title and we have the excellent 'Tales of' series and I hope the surprises will just keep coming."

Kirton added next week's release will go nicely alongside that of the infamously difficult From Software title.

"The Witcher 2 personally I think compliments Dark Souls, and it has touches of DS and Skyrim. The Witcher 2 is very unique in other areas however.

"It's great to have such strong RPGs to work on and titles such as Ni No Kuni and Tales of prove we are top of our game on the anime RPG sector as well. Ni No Kuni is one hell of a beautiful game."

A full interview with Kirton on The Witcher II will go live soon.