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The Tokyo Game Show for 2011 is coming in a little over a week, and as such the big Japanese publishers are starting to give details about what they will (and by omission, won't) be showing this year. Of course, given our focus, we're not going to give much time to the Konamis and Capcoms of the world - but, hey, here's the brief rundown of Square Enix!

The big Final Fantasy games to make an appearance this year are Type-0, XIII-2, and Theatrythym, with playable demos available for all three. Naturally, Versus is not listed in any form whatsoever, though it's possible that Squenix are keeping its presence secret for a nice surprise at showtime.

Dragon Quest will be represented by the new 3DS sequel to Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, and also by the Dragon Quest compilation for Wii. Other RPG franchises include a sequel to Chaos Rings for the iOS, and (what I believe to be) the first real look at a playable Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance for the 3DS.

Finally, given that Square Enix is the publisher of note for many other series in Japan, there will be some other games in their booth, like Modern Warfare 3, that wouldn't be represented in a similar show in the West. Hit the link below to see more of those games, and look for more news coming from TGS next week.

Source: andriasang

Square-Enix held a press conference yesterday in Japan (very early this morning for Europe or North America) detailing the much-anticipated Dragon Quest X. Turns out it's been structured as an multiplayer online RPG, complete with selectable races and subscription fees.

Dragon Quest X: The Wake of the Five Tribes: Online will have Wii and WiiU versions made, very similar to the GameCube and Wii versions made of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess soon after the Wii's launch. Players will create their own character, choosing from one of five different races, and can choose to play either entirely offline (with other online players replaced by NPCs) or pay a subscription fee to play online with others. The game will retain the series' trademark turn-based combat and menus, but will take the limited online features of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies several steps further.

DQX still has no formal release date (neither does the Wii U, for that matter), but lead designer Yuuji Horii is hopeful that it will come out in 2012. There is no word on a release outside of Japan, but Square-Enix and Nintendo have been pushing the DQ brand somewhat recently, so an eventual English-language release is likely.

Source: Kotaku

Despite the game just coming to light last week, details have already started to appear for the new Final Fantasy beat-tapping game for the Nintendo 3DS. First off, for those who feel that Square stretches themselves too thin, note that the game isn't being developed by Square at all; indieszero, the team behind the well-reviewed Electroplankton, will be at the helm of the actual game development.

It looks like the game will be split into worlds dedicated to some, most, or all of the main numbered series (that part's not quite clear, yet), and that some, most, or all of the games represented will also contribute a character to your roster, from which you will choose four for your party. Each game has three phases, "Field," "Battle," and "Event," and each of those phases will have a different gameplay type. There are, of course, some RPG aspects too around character building, but the details around just what that means remain murky too. What Square has said is that the game takes place in a world in between Chaos and Cosmos, so it seems that there may be some effort to append this game to the side universe that also contains Dissidia.

Of course, the main thing that seems to get people fired up about this game is the potential for awesome music. We know these songs are in, with announcements of more surely on the way soon:

• Clash on the Big Bridge
• One-Winged Angel
• To Zanarkand
• The Sunleth Waterscape
• Final Fantasy Main Theme

The tracks are indeed remixes from the originals, so they may or may not be to your liking.

For my money, it seems like this game might be a no-brainer. The art style is super-cute, the music is consistently one of the things the fans like best about the games, and Squenix have had very good success with portable games recently, more so than their big AAA console titles. I even like the official Japanese site, and that pains me to say since it's all in Flash.

Source: Kotaku, andriasang, THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY

Not much to say here, but a longer trailer from the newest Final Fantasy sequel came out today during E3. Square Enix hasn't gotten much play in the big E3 media so far, so this is a bit under the radar.

If you're looking forward to the sequel, the trailer can be found at Gamespot.

This was a bit of an underwhelming E3 day, at least for me. Let's hope for the best tomorrow!

Source: Gamespot

Why would one stay after hours to watch Sony's E3 2011 presser? Probably to either a) try to get a look at Kevin Butler or b) see if Sony apologizes for losing control of their security. You didn't get a), and you got b) out of the way just as fast as they possibly could do it. Blink and it's gone.

For me, I just sat through it and I'm not quite sure if there is a c), myself. I thought the overall presentation was pretty bland, though Sony will clearly score a lot of points with some gamers for not marrying their information to the Move the way Microsoft did Kinect. However, they might well lose points with a variety of other gamers for sticking so close to the handheld.

Some of Sony's games looked pretty great. I've never played an Uncharted, but Uncharted 3 does look solid in a crowded third-person, over-the-shoulder adventure genre. Resistance 3 looks like a perfectly adequate FPS. Everything is starting to look the same, though, and that wasn't helped by following Microsoft. You can show lots of adventure games and lots of FPSes, but after a while the brief time that each game has to show its uniqueness just fails, and I really didn't see anything during the PlayStation 3 portion of the presentation that really lept out as surprising or groundbreaking.

Once the Vita emerged, though, it got pretty interesting as long as you like handhelds. The tech behind the Vita looked pretty great in the live demos, though I for one have never been fully convinced by backside touchpads (fnar). The new handheld looks very much like a PSP, with the crosspad, four buttons, and two shoulders of the current PSP. After that, they added a second analog stick and made both sticks look more like DualShock sticks, made the screen multitouch-capable, and even added a back multitouch panel without a screen and front and back cameras.

The games shown live looked fanastic, nearly like PlayStation 3 games, and it seems like the time the devs have had with the development devices and SDK has paid off. I think the AT&T offering will not help the device; I would guess that the data plans will not be reasonably priced, and with no 4G availability, there will almost surely be a new version in just a couple years. PlayStation Suite, also on the mobile front, seems like a neat idea, but how many Android phones will really have the ability to control games that originated on PlayStation platforms?

Two things to point out here: one, there was pretty much no Square Enix here at all. That's two out of three down and barely any mention of Squenix - not a great sign, in my opinion. Two, please, please, don't let devs give presentations. God bless them, they make good games. They're not public speakers.

It really does seem like yesterday that the first trickles of news about the Revolution started showing up, even though in reality it's been very nearly seven years. Today, though, while Nintendo won't cop to it, gaming news outlets have begun to report that the Wii's successor will be out late next year.

It appears that Nintendo is willing to admit that they will no longer be able to survive on first-party console games, and that the new box will be better equipped to deal with, at the very least, the current competition. Of course, there's no way to know how Nintendo's next outing might cope against the next Xbox or Playstation, as there are just way too many variables way too off in the future. However, it does seem that the specs or even prototypes might already be in the hands of some third-party developers, which provides a nice bit of lead time into day-one titles for next Christmas.

Lending further credence to this still-not-official news is the fact that the current Wii is looking to get a price cut in May. This will be only the second price drop for the system, and the new price will settle in at $150.

For more information, it's probably going to be E3, which is in early June. However, it's all but certain that someone will break more concrete information sometime in the next eight weeks.

Source: Game Informer