Japanese developers have been making a lot of noise lately with the commitment from them to start targeting new titles that are in better tune with the tastes of the western audience. To that end, Namco Bandai has announced the formation of a new studio which will be called Surge.

The Surge studio will be operating internally within Namco Bandai. The first project to be released under the Surge label will be Afro Samurai that is based on the cartoon series. Namco already has a studio in the U.S. that was working on this title and no additional information was released regarding the fate of this Namco U.S.-based studio or whether they will remain working on this project.

Many Japanese developers are looking to expand their reach into the North American market space. In addition, some Japanese developers are also looking to pick up existing titles developed in the U.S. and translate them for marketing in the Japanese market, which has traditionally not received as many of the games that were released for North American audiences.

Our take on this is that in the end it could be a good thing, but it is going to take some time and research to understand the North American gaming market space, which is traditionally very different from that in Japan. Still, we believe it will provide a chance to see some new things that gamers in North America would not normally get to see; but, of course, we are fearful that we could wind up with customized poorly translated titles that just don’t appeal to the North American market space. We will just have to wait and see how this really works out.