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It’s no news now that the next installment hits the United States on March 9th this year. Needless to say this is long overdue and hopefully retail stores will be announcing midnight release plans soon. Check out the official website to tons of high quality screen shots, trailers, and info on the game (http://www.finalfantasyxiii.com)

Fuck yes

The Leipzig gaming convention, renamed to GamesCom this year, will showcase a number of exciting Square Enix titles in the works, including the Pony Friends 2.

Among the other and less important titles to be showcased this year at GamesCom:  Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIV, Dissidia, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Nier, a few of their new PC publishing efforts, Front Mission Evolved, and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days.

If you can all recall, Square Enix bought Eidos this year and renamed them to Square Enix Europe.

Data from Famitsu and other sources show that Square Enix has now sold 3.2 million copies of Dragon Quest IX in the 10 or so days since it came out in Japan.  This marks the second DS blockbuster in a row for Square Enix, who had Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days in the top 10 sales bracket as Dragon Quest IX first hit the shelves.  So what’s next for Square Enix?

A few things…

The continuation of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years for the American WiiWare market - with 3 additional episodes released on July 6th 2009 and 3 more due in August before the September conclusion.

Square Enix will continue it’s summer assault of the handheld gaming market in Japan with the release of two more titles in August:  Blood of Bahamut, an RPG from the folks who brought us Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings; and The Game With No Name: The Eye, a “first person survival horror” uhhh… whatever that is.  Apparently this is a sequel to the first Game with No Name.

And most important, the American release of Dissidia: Final Fantasy for the PSP on August 25th, 2009.  Day one.  I guess I’ll have to clean my PSP screen and charge it up for this.

As for site downtime, my apologies.  Hope everyone is still around, feel free to reply to this post with a “hi!” if you are.

Whoa, site was down for a few days. Miss us?

One of the greatest joys in life is to use your inherent talents for the benefit of those less fortunate. But how could something like Final Fantasy serve the greater good? A group of players located in Texas known as the Speed Gamers recently hosted a week long non-stop gaming marathon in which they attempted to complete each and every one of the mainline Final Fantasy titles (that’s 1-10 and 12), feeding the entire saga over the Net via live stream video. While they didn’t quite succeed in accomplishing that (however, they did finish 1-3 & 5-9 and almost 4, which was a valiant effort), what they did achieve was raising over $50,000 for ACT Today, a charity for autistic children. The support for their efforts was very apparent, as the viewer load on the stream got as high as 22,000 people at one point. And we’re totally down with that.

The Speed Gamers

In case you didn’t get the memo, the Japanese like Dragon Quest. A lot. So much, in fact, that the freaking strategy guide for the game topped this week’s book sales charts with nearly 200,000 units turned. Who said print was dead?

[Source - GoNintendo]

The next edition of Square Enix’s mindblowingly popular Dragon Quest series hits retail in Japan today. The previous games were already selling like hotcakes on consoles, but now that it has come to the also mindblowingly popular Nintendo DS, one can only imagine what kind of monster sales event this is going to be.

Game developers just love their countdown sites. Today, Square Enix’s official website was updated with this new page:

Whatever could it be? We’ll find out in about 10 days, but in the meantime you can visit the teaser page by clicking the image.

The Last Remnant was originally pitched as a multiplatform title. Then it became a timed 360 exclusive. Then the PC version came out. So where’s the PS3 version? During a recent shareholder meeting, that very question was asked.

Wada responded that although it’s tough on the development side of things to say that you’ll release a game on multiple platforms but end up not doing so, Square Enix has to think about profitability. If there’s a gap in the release of multiple versions of a game, and if the first version didn’t necessarily see such great success, they have to think that there won’t be a change in performance on a new platform. - AndriaSang

So yeah, Debbie Downer Day for all you Playstation devotees. PS3 owners will also be happy to know that there’s still no plans to release Star Ocean: The Last Hope on their system either. But at least you’re still getting Final Fantasy XIII, right? Right?

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete is out now in North America, and to celebrate, here’s some treats from the director’s cut. First is the remastered version of the Advent: One Winged Angel theme (which sounds more balanced and cleaner, plus has about 45 seconds of new material), second is Omnislash Version 6, an even more awesome update from Version 5 in the original Advent Children.

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The newest issue of Famitsu features a lot of new information on Final Fantasy XIII and IGN has done a lengthy write-up on what new information was revealed.

Among the new details:

The only gameplay area the magazine provides new solid facts about is the Driving Mode — the new form of summon where you get to ride your summon beasts.

Sounds interesting and new for a Final Fantasy battle feature… tell us more IGN:

Driving Mode apparently turns FFXIII into somewhat of an action game. You can freely control the motorcycle with the analogue pad, and attack by inputting commands. You won’t be able to use this mode forever, though. Eventually, you’ll have to execute a finish move, bringing an end to Driving Mode. Shiva will also disappear here, leaving Snow with his more mortal battle members.

I, for one, am sold.  Spring 2010 can’t arrive soon enough.  Go to IGN to read the rest of the article, it’s a very lengthy piece and includes a number of new details on the game.