Ubisoft confirms Naruto on Xbox 360

by Christopher Grant { Apr 6th 2006 at 4:35PM }

Continuing today's plethora of Japanese-related Xbox 360 announcements, Ubisoft has confirmed another title (in addition to Rayman 4) that was present on last month's leaked release schedule: Naruto.

Nothing has been revealed about the title, except that it's based on the "ridiculously popular" anime/manga series, that it's coming to the Xbox 360, and it's being developed outside Japan. The Naruto video games have been mostly fighters and brawlers released in Japan; Gamecube and GBA titles just recently made their North American debuts.

Have no idea what Naruto is? Check out 1UP's recent cover story on the series and its video game history.

[Thanks, Master X 25 and Sage]

Tags: Naruto, Ubisoft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

JohnBlack @ Apr 6th 2006 4:52PM

I'm just hoping they'll use the japanese voice cast instead of the american cast. Hearing Rasengan or Chidori with a American voice will just sound stupid.
And if they insist on using the english voice cast i hope they give us the option to switch language like Team ninja did with Ninja Gaiden

AndrewNeo @ Apr 6th 2006 5:02PM

I agree with JohnBlack, the English dub of Naruto is horrible. If I hear "Believe it!" one more time... (mind anyone who hasn't seen the Japanese subs, Naruto's 'catch phrase' wasn't in there once)

Kn1ves @ Apr 6th 2006 5:03PM

i wish they only give xbox360 all the filler episodes to play with. its just not worthy...

monkeypox @ Apr 6th 2006 5:20PM

well, they had to come up with SOMETHING to replace "dattebayo", since it doesn't translate to anything.

but they did a pretty piss-poor job of it, not that it could've saved the english dub from being as terrible as it is.

adempton @ Apr 6th 2006 5:37PM

The voice cast on the American version sound like they were just randomly chosen off the street. I hope they give a toggle in the options menu to change back to the Japanese vocal track. They probably won't use up all the room on the disc anyway... Give us the original voices!!

Patrick @ Apr 6th 2006 5:53PM

Maybe it is me, but most anime based video games arn't that good. OK the last DBZ one for the ps2 was OK but in general the games kinda suck. I am a fan of anime but I am just not impressed with the video game versions.

KevinM @ Apr 6th 2006 6:08PM

Hmm, this sounds great! The current Naruto fighting game they have out now on the Game Cube is pretty well done. The voices and the animation fall right in line with that done in the anime.

And the anime is one of the better produced TV series in my opinion. Nothing like DBZ, well almost nothing ;)

Looking forward to this title.

t c m @ Apr 6th 2006 6:11PM

I know it's off topic but I was in best buy today and they got a shioment of 360s in last week. They've sold one. I live in a city that's the hub for about 1/4 of the state I live in. Right when you walk in they ahve all these 360 bocks piled up(with the systems inside, picked one up to see, sucker is pretty hevy) and a huge high def screen and a couch. 2 tiny little kids were sitting on the couch playing and that was it. Anyone have a link to how many were sold since last week(when stores were restocked finally)?

Methinks this is a bad omen for Microsoft....

Charles @ Apr 6th 2006 6:25PM

YEAH!!! It's a Naruto FPS. Thnak you MS

Lee @ Apr 6th 2006 6:48PM

Players of the PS2 and Gamecube Naruto games will vouch that they are pretty enjoyable. Wide selection of characters, clean cel-shaded graphics that really do the series justice, with tight gameplay.

Budokai for the PS2 was also a decent title. The anime beat'em ups are getting better, though there's a lot of crap churned out. Bleach games were quite poor for example.

Nmaster @ Apr 6th 2006 7:12PM

As owner of the entire Naruto series for Gamecube (courtesy imports and that 1UP cover story's contest which I won), I can honestly say that it's my favorite series in years. I've been known to call the latest iteration, Naruto Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4, "the best game of this generation", and I hold to that. Multiplayer battles are just so much fun, nothing since Super Smash Bros. has even come close. And you don't have to be a fan of the series at all to enjoy it.

As for Naruto on the 360? They'll screw it up. I HOPE they screw it up. Such an American system doesn't deserve the best Japanese anime in years.

I wanna throw ninja stars w/ my Revolution controller...

Mark @ Apr 6th 2006 7:13PM

I think Naruto on XBOX360 is a good Idea. If they can revive Tomb Raider for the 360 anything is possible. I just downloaded the demo for TR for my 360 and I have to say, It's about damn time. Now if they can bring Naruto up to speed or to look like that new game coming out 9Dragons, they will have my vote and my money for that matter.

duscrom @ Apr 6th 2006 7:16PM

If there is one thing I've learned, you can't base Sales on one store like that. I live in a College town, and I know you can't find 360s anywhere still. But when my BF went to get one, he drove 45 mins, and picked one up in bumblefuck IL.... And that was like... 2 months ago.

xdjriceyesx @ Apr 6th 2006 7:27PM

Being developed outside Japan? I already don't like where this is going...

Sae @ Apr 6th 2006 7:27PM

Shigeru Miyamoto and his team behind The Legend of
Zelda should really make an adventure game for this series.

Snake420 @ Apr 6th 2006 9:17PM

Typical Japanophile nonsense.

1. There's nothing wrong with the dub. Its a fine job. Period. This isn't 1989 anymore, you're nit picking, grow up. Japanese doesn't technically sound better than english or any other language. Its just something your conditioned to believe by your over immersion.

2. Just because its not made in Japan doesn't mean it will suck. You have to realize that those outside of Japan only really see the cream of the crop. You really can't fathom how much garbage they make.

3. Systems don't "deserve" anything. It shouldn't matter where the system hails from. But you can try your ideas in your holy land Japan if you want. Unless your Japanese you're going to find out there's alot of things, places, and services that you some how just don't deserve.

Scott @ Apr 6th 2006 9:20PM

Hopefully, it will be more than just a fighting game. There have been enough iterations of fighting games for Naruto already (granted they were only sold in Japan but still).

Daryl @ Apr 6th 2006 9:46PM

# 14 Snake420

The japanese does sound better, not because it's japanese, but because it carries the emotion of the story. Just like an american movie sounds better in english because the characters put the emotion into the scene through their language (inflection in voice, tone, etc..). Not picking a fight or anything, just stating that the original language sounds better (watch any american film in the dub language, and you'll see what I mean.

Keith @ Apr 6th 2006 10:03PM

I agree completely with Daryl, the voice acting is far more better, its like the voice actors themselves know the personality of the character they are portraying, however with English dubs, people have simply been paid to say lines. I prefer Japanese w/ English subs any day.

Stephen @ Apr 6th 2006 10:07PM

#14

Imagine Aragon from the Lord of the Rings speaks in Chinese or Japanese with a high pitch...can you imagine how it would sound like...

Generally most anime's english dub are not meeting the standard. The English voice actors for anime sound like they are "reading" instead of "acting" sometimes. A voice that is suppose to sounded mature in Japanese would be dubbed with a childish voice in the English dub for no apparent reason. There are plenty of examples (a recent example would be Lacus from Gundam SEED...Gosh what did they do to her voice!).

Japanese animation studio are very serious about the voice they choose for each character. It's a serious business to them. Often, the voice acting was completed before the actual animation/drawing is even finished. The artist would adjust the animation/drawing to match the voice actor's emotion. The voices are the soul of the anime.

There are certain anime with excellent English dub too, but it's rare. If they are going to do English dub, then please also put the Japanese dub into the NA version of the game. I don't mind if they don't do an English dub at all. It even saves them money. They should either:

1.) Put English dub and Japanese dub with English subtitle option

2.) Japanese dub with English subtitle only.

Mitch @ Apr 6th 2006 10:11PM

#14 Snake420

I agree with #16; Japanese usually sounds better simply because pretty much everything sounds better in its original language. Dubs are just bad.

That said, I completely agree with your other two points.

Ahms @ Apr 6th 2006 10:15PM

I agree with 16. I started with the dub of Naruto on CN, and then saw original Japanese episodes online. The emotion and work put into the Jap voices far outshines the dub in my opinion. I stopped watching the episodes on CN and now just watch the online ones

However I see where 14 is coming from. I always hear "the original was better", and I know that's not always true (I love the dub of Tenchi). It does seem sometimes that people can become too "fanboish" about voices and location as well

Any case, looking forward to the game!

t c m @ Apr 6th 2006 10:50PM

I dunno, I live in a town, while the actual town pop is only 50,000, that has over 300,000 commuters daily. It's pretty much the hub for the entire northeat portion of the state. And it has a few colleges too. I'm heading down to charlotte this weekend I'll check things there but my friend that I'm visiting tells me that they have them stocked there as well but he doesn't know how well they are selling. But it's not like people here don't know that best buy and eb got them in stock, there is a HUGE display out in the front windows. Anyway, I'm looking for a sales list for last week just to see how many units they moved, they still needed to move an additional one million+ in these first two weeks of restocking to match the pace of the original xbox here in the US(pretending that there was no shortage for the 360).

I haven't gotten one myself, kinda figuring I'll wait for an exclusive worth getting and perhaps there will be a price drop by then. But if they don't get a decent install base I'm just gonna forget it alltogether. It's starting to feel a lot like dreamcast.... except without good japanese games.

KirbyMeister @ Apr 6th 2006 11:23PM

I will never understand all these dub haters. Go make out with a katakana already, it'll improve the gene pool.

Now seriously, I've heard the original voice and the English dub voice, and I HATE the original Japanese voice. It sounds like a screaming 4 year old.

Frothster @ Apr 6th 2006 11:34PM

KirbyMeister:
And the English dub for Naruto sounds like a gravely/wheezy woman attempting to sound like a young boy.

I don't understand your point, aside to home in on differing tastes and throw in your two cents about how you hate Japanophiles. We get it.

I don't think many people have problems with dubs so much as it is they have problems with 4kids, who managed to really F@*K up two incredible Japanese series: One Piece and Naruto. Both have tremendous passion and great voiceovers and action in Japanese. When 4kids got ahold of these frankly teen/adult shows, they lived up to their name and made them FOR KIDS, meaning low quality, with censorship and a lack of respect for the emphasis that needs to be placed on voice acting.

Many many dubs are excellent, just not any from 4kids.

Todd @ Apr 7th 2006 12:35AM

Dubs are ok for people that don't realize it's dubbed in the first place. I had no problem with Voltron or Speed Racer as a kid, or even now, and those were about as bad as they come. However I personally think that anything should be watched in it's native language with subtitles simply because it is how the shows creator wants it to sound like. Especially with animation since people are chosen specifically for their voice. I know I wouldn't want something I created modified just to give it someone else�s idea of what would be more acceptable to the masses. "We love the characters, but we want this one to sound like a Texan, this one to sound like a New Yorker, and maybe this tough looking guy to sound like an urban street thug"...oh hell no!

Back to the topic, I too think it's a major mistake to develop the game to one of the most popular anime shows in Japan out of Japan. I couldn't give you a reason, but it just doesn't seem right. Kind of like an American flag with made in Taiwan on it.

epobirs @ Apr 7th 2006 1:52AM

I'm not a voice track snob but plenty of anime going back to the 50s had horrible voice work. Some of the voices favored by the people handling the localization were just grating. But then, shows like Gigantor and Speed Racer were pretty horrible in the original, too. There were some high points but TV sucked incredibly when I was a kid. Eventually guys like me who'd grown up resenting the needlessly poor quality of this stuff came to be in charge of the industry and things got pretty good. Some companies like 4Kids still don't get it but the range of good translations from good original script is far more plentiful than anyone should have time to fully cover.

A good voice director will study the original for the character definition but won't be enslaved to it if there is a useful vocal trait to better convey that character to the target audience for the translation. A good example is 'Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi.' The original gives characters very specific regional accents that are easily recognized by a native of Japan but mean nothing to Americans. This was worked out by giving the English version regional accents that carry the same cultural regard in the US. Several reviewers fluent in both languages were impressed by the effect. A lot of puns were hard to carry over but you can't have everything. THey don't work too well for those dependent on subtitles, either.

BPMΩ @ Apr 7th 2006 4:24AM

To #23: 4Kids did NOT do Naruto. If they did, they'd have removed all Japanese culture from it. And it'd be called something like "Adventures of Ninja Ned"...

It was done by Viz Media, and it isn't that highly censored (It even gets a TV-PG rating, despite being on the Toonami block).

And frankly, I think the Naruto dub is good for such an overrated show (That's right, I don't think Naruto's that great). Yes, I've watched the Japanese version, too, but I think the Naruto dub is just fine. Yeah, so Naruto says "BELIEVE IT!" every time he's on screen... so what? They had to do something for his Japanese catchphrase of "DATTEBAIYO!" It makes sense, and I think it sounds funny.

HOWEVER... English Vs. Japanese is really irrelevant to the topic (And I doubt you'd be able to fit both languages on a 360 disc, due to HD graphics requiring so much space. :P), so...

How do we know Ubisoft's involvement with this project, other than getting the Naruto license from Viz Media? Are they actually the developers, or just the publishers?
Plus, Ubisoft is many different teams (like EA, Capcom, Nintendo, etc.)... Which studio, exactly, IS the developer?

Frothster @ Apr 7th 2006 7:52AM

26, thanks for the clarification, I honestly didn't know.
Since I barely watch the English show and Naruto's voice actor is the same person who does Luffy for One Piece, I just kinda assumed. Oops! :P

Sadly I have no information on the actual game, but let's hope it's a shining example of... er... whatever genre it's going to be, exactly!

jason @ Apr 7th 2006 8:44AM

Dubs can be better or worse than the originals... don't try to blanket statement this fact. Take Goldenboy for example... AWESOME dub, decent original... Cowboy Bebop? Awesome dub, awesome original. Naruto? Decent dub, great original. The voices could be worse (just watch an episode of One Piece and you'll see how bad they can get), but don't assume that anything that comes from Japan is covered in gold and kanji...

On a side note, "Believe it!" does get old REALLY fast... I guess the original phrase of "dattebaiyo!" would probably get old fast as well, if I actually understood the japanese language...

Oh, and as long as they don't royally fuck this game up, I have high hopes for it.

Zsavior @ Apr 7th 2006 9:08AM

As for the XBOX 360 getting an anime game right-on time for them to branch out from FPS and driving sims. I hope it is well done, see we can truely see the potential this system has to do fantasy beyond a western storyline, idea, and play mechanics. Now for the anime dubbing debate here.

I love seeing people talk about how dubbed anime is great, this sub culture is out of hand,it turned a happy past time into watered down crap. But you don't know the content it is watered down garbage cause you never seen the original eps; so you defend the crap you are getting.

Most anime we get over here is made for children, One piece, Naruto, DBZ, the difference is the children over in japan have a higher grasp on what is real and what is not. I am not even going to go into what they took out and left in one piece all I will say is that it is crap. My answer to this has always been one of silence. If I meet somebody that is already entrenched in the american anime I don't say anything, if I meet somebody who has never seen it I give them the Dled japanese episodes.

The bad side of this, is the fact that great mangas Like "Air Gear" are being watered down in japan to, so it can have a easy child friendly anime release in america. So now if you really want to know the proper story you got to pick up the manga. So keep on believing your dubbed Licensed anime is so Great, cause your not getting the authors original vision at all.

As for those Japanophile comments, what is so japanophile about wanting to see media and content untainted, censored or slanted towards American ideas. You could easily watch disney if you just want to see animation, or are you just tuning into these animes for the violence. That is probably it that is why you don't appreciate anything else other than the fight scenes. That is also the reason licensing companies swallow up so much shounen anime first, they know they don't have to try, and can cut anything up if the american public sees fighting. Enjoy your candy pop sucking, Non-alcholic, drinking humorless anime with out calling people names, because you obviously haven't see the originals to know what you are missing.

Gonzo @ Apr 7th 2006 10:56AM

Yes the english dub is bad but not as bad as the new Akira.
These are the kinds of things xbox has to do to engage the Japanese market. Really engage them.

Todd @ Apr 7th 2006 11:10AM

Epobirs, I understand why they dub the regional accents the way they do to try to reflect the regional accents in Japan. All in all, it does make for a dub that is closer to the Japanese version. I just don�t think it�s as believable. Simply because while you might have a group of people from several different districts in Japan come together, I find it harder to believe it would happen in America. I�m from Louisiana and if you�ve been across this state much you�d know that the accents vary a lot anyway. However when you consider the whole US you�ve got so many to choose from that when they are combined in such a wide array as seen in some dubs it come across as campy. I also understand the part about puns being hard to translate. Chestnuts & squirrels don�t have the same impact in the US as it does in Japan. But the series you mentioned is a good one. I also think that FLCL did a really good job of capturing the energy that was in the Japanese version.

KirbyMeister @ Apr 8th 2006 12:36AM

Frosther said: I don't think many people have problems with dubs so much as it is they have problems with 4kids, who managed to really F@*K up two incredible Japanese series: One Piece and Naruto.

Naruto wasnt dubbed by 4Kids, but by Viz. Get your facts straight!

Although I agree [and forgot to add 'obvious' reiteration statements]: Dubs have had a bad history of sucking; however that does not provide a rationale of bashing every official translation... Seriously, I'm tired of Indiscriminant Dub bashers who take the very act of translation as an insult... you'll find them on EVERY FRIGGIN ANIME FORUM, ranting about how it's supposedly always better in the original, even though said person does not have a single iota of Japanese skills beyond the simple otakuisms of abusing 'bishōnen' and 'kawaii' and other random Japanese words.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a term for those kinds of people. They are Bakanese. The biggest complaint of a Bakanese is the obvious straw man complaint of the accent; example: the'll always complain that a character with an Osaka accent] is replaced with a southerner's accent.... even though it is literally impossible to use an Osaka accent in English as it is NOT an English accent. A translator would /do the obvious/ and select a voice actor with some form of English-based accent [Southerner, New York, Ebonics]... in fact it's not that hard to compare accents of different languages by examining how they differ from the major dialect of that language.

And then there is stuff that gets edited out of the original anime [in respect to the original manga] ... i.e. certain curse seals that used to be Swatstikas [which are not considered 'nazi' or 'evil' in Japan, but good luck] which were edited to be an 'X'.

Oh crap I ranted all over you, Joystiq. I'm sorry.

jopojelly @ Apr 8th 2006 2:19AM

The problem with dubs is that there are many words and phrases in Japanese that have no English equivalent. Such as suffixes such as -sama, -san, -chan. or the whole degree of politeness. or "ne" "sou" and other mumblings.
That said, I prefer Japanese audio with dubs, because it helps me learn Japanese (Im 4th semester), and because the whole meaning is portrayed, which is important for characterization and plot elements and such

Zabooza @ Apr 8th 2006 8:34PM

I agree if its englished dubbed its not worth buying....i refuse to watch the series on cartoon network because the english voice acting is horrible....Also I hope this game will be based off the gamecube games....those fighting games are the best games ive ever played most ppl dont think its as good as it really is b/c they havent figured out half the stuff you can do in it...its def one of the most versitile fighting games ever check out this tourny i was in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErWrN4WAqoc&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewillvolution%2Ecom%2Fmatch58%2Ehtm
I wasnt fighting in that match tho.....

Chase @ May 7th 2006 12:38PM

personally, i think the english voices our fine...especially when they get mad. and about that catch phrase-"beleive it!"...i thought it was hilarious when sasuke made fun of Naruto and said "believe it!"...this series is truly a masterpiece...and i love dragonballz...it's music is so much better...but naruto is a bit more organized. I loved Tenkaichi for DBZ for the PS2, and i'm definately looking forward to the XBOX 360 version of Naruto as well.