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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.

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.

Not letting the announcement of Final Fantasy XIV phase them, the Final Fantasy XI team is preparing the release of a new content pack in July.

We’re pleased to inform you that the upcoming version update is on track for a late July release! The development and quality assurance teams are hard at work cooking up a whole slew of exciting new content that will feature the continuation of the Wings of the Goddess missions, new areas in past Vana’diel, job adjustments, additions and refinements for Campaign and Moblin Maze Mongers, and much, much more.

We’ll post more information as Square makes the details of the July update known through PlayOnline.com.

This is old news, but it is news that we haven’t posted yet.

A week before E3, we found out about NIER, a multi-platform action-adventure game  catered to Western game audiences.  Square Enix also has a website for the game up, feel free to check it out.

Also, here is the debut trailer:

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YouTube DirektNIER E3 2009 Trailer

This is apparently what Japanese executives think Americans want to play, because the term “Western audiences” is getting tossed around a lot when describing this game.  Me, I think I’ll wait around for FFXIII.

Final Fantasy VII on PlayStation 3?  You betcha.  The original, classic, game has been made available through the PlayStation Network as a PlayStation classic purchased.  Meaning it’s the original game, and can be purchased and played that way.  If you have bought it, post in the comments and let us know what you think.

Via Kotaku Japanese sales charts, we learn that Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days has sold very well in Japan in it’s first week of availability for the Nintendo DS.  The Roxas side-story title sold 295,000 copies to secure it the top spot for all video games sales in Japan.

The game covers Roxas’ existence between the events of Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II and answers a few questions about the mysterious Organization III.  Nintendo announces at their E3 press conference this week that the title is due for North American release on September 29, 2009.

Behold, the Final Fantasy XIII trailer from E3 in ENGLISH!

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Gametrailers Direkt

Final Fantasy XIV was announced just now at the Sony E3 press conference as a Ps3 (and probably PC) exclusive for release in 2010.  The official website also states this will release for the Windows OS as well.

This is the sequel to Final Fantasy XI, a MMORPG, and was codenamed “Rapture” during it’s development.

Update:

Grainy youtube trailer!  There is a HD much higher quality version on the official site, link below.

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YouTube Direkt

Update 2:

The official website is now online.  Definitely some Taru, Elvaan, Mithra, Hume and Galkas in those illustrations.  This is a clear successor to Final Fantasy XI.  There are also some little horned dudes.  Not sure about them…

Yes, that’s Nobuo Uematsu doing the music.  The official site confirms it.  The game staff consists of veteran Final Fantasy team members - mainly the FF11 director and producer leading this project up, and art directorship from Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII veteran Akihiko Yoshida.

Producer: Hiromichi Tanaka
Director: Nobuaki Komoto
Art Director: Akihiko Yoshida
Music: Nobuo Uematsu (!)

Nintendo had their E3 press conference this morning, among the highlights:

• New Super Mario Brothers for Wii
• Super Mario Galaxy 2
• Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (handheld RPG)
• Wii Fit Plus
• Golden Sun DS (!)
• Metroid: Other M

Want to guess which one I’m most excited about? Post your thoughts in the comments.