Good news, Disgaea fans! There’s a new Disgaea game being released in Japan this November.

The bad news: It’s a visual novel, so it will probably never be translated into English.

Visual novels have been a popular genre of video games in Japan for many years, yet they’ve never quite caught on in the Western world. My theory as to why: Americans don’t like to read. Those that do are satisfied with traditional books to quench their literary appetite. The addition of imagery and occasional multiple-choice plot direction doesn’t keep our attention in the video game platform. Video games are more regarded for interactive entertainment and as soon as we pick up the controller, we’re ready to start punching and shooting.

It also hasn’t helped matters that many visual novels contain mature (often erotic) situations. Unlike Japan, sexually explicit entertainment hasn’t been fully accepted into mainstream culture and is nearly impossible to gain support by Western video game publishers.

Personally, I hope that “Infinite” makes the cut for localization.

Disgaea: Infinite focuses mostly on the characters from the original title of the series, with appearances of characters from its sequels. It will be released via the PlayStation Network for the PSP, with the unconfirmed possibility for PS3 playability.

Check out the trailer below:

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.