Level-5 expanding to United States sometime this fall

Level-5 is a development studio near and dear to the hearts of gamers everywhere. As the current development team behind the latest Dragon Quest games, White Knight Chronicles, the entire Professor Layton series, as well as the criminally under-appreciated Dark Cloud series, Level-5 is one of the premier development studios in Japan.

Thus, it’s actually kind of exciting to hear this bit of news. According to AndriaSang (via Gamasutra), Level-5 is looking to branch out of its native Japan to set up a branch in Southern California’s Santa Monica this September. Named Level-5 International America, it is currently unknown if Level-5 will be setting up shop for game development or for localization, but the company has been planning to branch out of Japan for a while now, with a European branch still in the works for sometime in 2011. Either way, it means we can see a branching out of the company to roll out more of their own IPs and better reach the Western market.