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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.

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 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.

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 (!)

Did you know that the sequel to fan-favorite Final Fantasy IV was released today to the WiiWare download service?  Here are five things about the game that might interest you.

The Title: The game is titled Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.

The Developer: Matrix Softeware developed The After Years for Square Enix after being involved with the remakes of Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV for the Nintendo DS.  Yeah, you know those snazzy 3D remakes?  Matrix Software made them.

The Setting: Final Fantasy IV: The After Years takes place 17 years after the original title, featuring the son of two primary FFIV characters as the lead protagonist.  There’s more, but it would be spoiling it for you.

The Cost: This is where it gets tricky.  This is an episodic game, meaning it is broken into 9 chapters that will be released between now and September.  I’ve seen a couple of variations, but for the most part it is 2 chapters in June, 3 in July, 3 in August, with a finale in September.  The initial chapter and “main game” itself is 800 points, you must get this to purchase subsequent chapters.  So that’s 8 bucks USD, following chapters are priced at 300 points (3USD), the first of which, Rydia’s Tale, already available for purchase.  The finale may cost 800 points, meaning the total price of this game will come out to 40 USD, about the price of a Square Enix DS title if this were released for the handheld.

The Music: Mostly Nobuo Uematsu stuff from the original game, from what I can tell so far.

Better late than never. Here’s what is on the slate for the show, starting Tuesday:

• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers - Wii
• Final Fantasy IV: The After Years - WiiWare (Which comes out Monday, BTW)
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord - Wiiware
• Final Fantasy XIII - XB360, PS3
• Front Mission Evolved - XB360, PS3, PC
• Nier - XB360, PS3
• Supreme Commander II - XB360, PC
• Order of War - PC
• Dissidia Final Fantasy - PSP
• Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days - DS