Resonance of Fate
"Resonance of Fate" was first hinted at prior to April 2009, then announced as an untitled "mystery" RPG at the beginning of the month. According to Shimano, its codename "Project Cobra" had been bandied about prior to the reveal, but no-one had suspected anything about its true nature. Its official Japanese title, along with details such as tri-Ace's partnership with Sega, were unveiled on April 8, 2009. "Resonance of Fate" marked the first collaboration between tri-Ace and Sega—most of tri-Ace's previous games had been published by Square Enix. The reason for the choice was two-fold: tri-Ace wanted a different publisher due to the radical nature of their new game, and Sega wanted a title to break into the RPG market. As "Resonance of Fate" seemed unique enough to stand out in the market, Sega agreed to take up publishing duties. According to staff, the Japanese title was originally going to be either "Resonance of Fate" or "Resonance of Time", but Sega asked it to be changed to "End of Eternity". This fell in line with a trend among many Japanese games of referencing endings in their titles. It was officially announced for a Western release in May 2009. The game debuted in Japan on January 28, 2010 with a March release in North America and PAL regions. The European version came with text localization in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
Resonance of Fate
Development of "Resonance of Fate" took place over three years, beginning around 2007, using the codename "Project Cobra". The game was developed by tri-Ace, whose other notable games include "Valkyrie Profile" and the "Star Ocean" series. It was directed by Takayuki Suguro, produced by Mitsuhiro Shimano and Jun Yoshino, and programmed by Yuichiro Kitao and Yoshiharu Gotanda. At the start of development, the team decided upon the key concepts: a story focusing on the world's fate, a setting where human life was "managed", a limited number of characters, a unified game area that was expansive while not being open world, and a combat system that revolved around firearms. During the planning stages, production time and costs were taken in account, and all the features were carefully planned and chosen so as little content as possible needed to be cut. According to Suguro, the game began development on Xbox 360 because it was the first major seventh generation console to be released, and it was relatively easy to develop games on the system. It was ported to the PlayStation 3 later in production.