News

Dragon Quest IX is the big story this week, as it's finally about to make its North American debut this weekend. Squenix and Nintendo have set up a bit of an event in New York City to commemorate the launch; if you're near Manhattan tomorrow, 10 July, you can swing to the World of Nintendo store in midtown (which sadly, I never got to visit when I was living there - it looked awesome from the outside). Yuji Horii, creator of the DQ franchise, will be there, and apparently there will be some Dragon Quest-themed treats for eating too. And you can buy the game a day early! No word on whether you can drink Slimes, though.

My call, though, is that if you really wanted the game that badly you probably preordered it anyway.

In other game news, developer Obsidian says they want a crack at the Chrono Trigger franchise. Obsidian are best known for sequels to original games, one of which they're working on for Squenix already (Dungeon Siege 3). Would they ever get the keys to the castle that is Chrono Trigger? Yeah, pretty much no chance if you ask me. Perhaps they should just start on a sequel and see how far they get.

Finally, here's one that snuck in under my radar: Square Enix and GamePot are bringing a new action MMO to the States. The game, Fantasy Earth Zero, is a free-to-play MMO with a primary focus on large PvP battles. It's been out in Japan for over three years but launched in the US in May.

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, Square Enix North America

Ah, Squeeeeenix.

Is there much to squee about this week? I believe there is. It does, however, depend on the user, but there's a lot of pretty cool stuff going on at the moment (though some of it may disappoint). First, the piece that is worth checking out in the near future. Square-Enix is looking for applicants to write for the Dragon Quest series. The catch being that the applicants would need to be near Shinjuku, Tokyo. There's an English summary of the application page here, which is pretty interesting. Prize* goes to whoever can create the weirdest storyline from four of those key points. But that's not the only news from Japan - after seeing the success of the Monster Hunter series for the PSP, Square-Enix started developing their own game in the same vein, entitled "Lord of Arcana", also for the PSP. If it doesn't perform as well as they hope, they'll have to rely on the next thing I have for you. And it won't disappoint.

Final Fantasy XIV, the second MMORPG in the main series, will be released this September, at one of two times, depending on your urge to play it. Your first option is to buy the Collector's Edition on September the 22nd, and get a bunch of free goodies that aren't technically free since you paid $25 extra for it. The second option is to wait another 8 days until the 30th, when the standard edition is released for $50. With either choice, you'll get one month of free play time before you have to pay the $12.99 monthly fee. I hate to use dollars to convey the prices, but that's all the information we've got on pricing so far. And hey, it's coming pretty soon. Just be thankful Square-Enix aren't trying to make it in 3D as we- oh wait a minute, there was a tech demo of that at E3. Not that that means anything, as the developers were keen to stress it was JUST a tech demo, but it shows that they, too, are heading down the road of three dimensions.

Finally, a speck of information on the elusive Final Fantasy Versus XIII. At long last, the game's story has been finished, as well as character designs. Now all they have to do, is, you know, make the game. So we're still a long way off of a release date. A loooooooooooooong way off.

*Prize not included.

Source: SiliconEra, Kotaku

With E3 dead and gone, there was a little bit of slowdown in Square Enix news. We'll be back to things trickling through until Tokyo Game Show, I'm sure, in which we'll probably get fresh deluges of news about Final Fantasy Versus XIII and XIV Online. For now, though, the trickle is on.

First news is that Xbox 360 might not get a hold of the new Online entry. The director of XIV, Hiromichi Tanaka, is saying that the game won't be on 360 because Xbox Live is too closed of a system. It appears that the "business scheme" Microsoft puts forth just doesn't do what Square Enix wants for the game, as put forth by Yoichi Wada in a separate interview. Eggboxers shouldn't give up hope, though, I don't think - it's not as if Final Fantasy XI didn't make the port eventually, and we don't know what might be in the cards for the future.

On the Versus front, the first new media since last year's TGS came out this week, with a bit of detail behind it. The screens are scans from Famitsu, and have an interesting look to them, with one in particular showing a player character outside of a somewhat "modern" gas station, with "modern" here representing something like 1950s America. The rest of the details came from Nomura, and aren't exactly groundbreaking - there are some destructible environments, and a large open world, and enemies will by and large be visible before combat but some will sneak up. Given what I see in the screenshots and the descriptions above, it actually sounds a bit like a more sandboxy Parasite Eve so far. No complaints here if that's the case.

What might be the most interesting thing of the week, at least for the Square Enix Naysayers Club, is that Wada has also said this week in Forbes magazine that all future Square Enix games will have a level of multiplayer or social networking capability. I understand, I understand - this could go really badly. It could result in all Squenix games being driven by microtransactions, as seems to be the growing trend in social gaming. It could even result in games where you have to harass your friends on Facebook in order to progress. Or, it could be something cool. Maybe it shares selected progress items or achievements to your Twitter or Facebook wall. Maybe it opens up some true multiplayer as in the beloved SNES entries from the Mana series. The only thing we do know so far is that this new business plan is meant to impact all games, up to and including the core Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts franchises.

Until next time, I'll be sharing all my gaming exploits with you until Square makes it automatic!

Source: Eurogamer, Final Fantasy XIII Net, Kotaku

In 2050, I'll be seventy years old. At the rate I'm going, far too arthritic to even pick up a gamepad, let alone play Final Fantasy VII with it. Certainly too old to use PlayStation Move, I'm sure. However, that's the latest on the ongoing not-really-news saga of a FF7 remake; Wada-san claimed that it would take at least ten times longer in development as Final Fantasy XIII. That's probably a joke. But it certainly is another indicator that it just isn't going to happen.

Not-news aside, it's another fairly quiet week leading up to E3, and, more importantly, the World Cup. (Seriously, the WC is only every four years. You get E3 every summer.) The biggest news is probably that a large number of Final Fantasy XI accounts were compromised recently. Not a good time, either, since Squenix will no doubt be looking to convert a great many of their current user base to Final Fantasy XIV later this year.

For those looking for Final Fantasy XIII Versus, SiliconEra reports that it's in the queue behind new localizations (like the just-released Korean version) of Final Fantasy XIII and the release of Final Fantasy XIV. It appears that since Final Fantasy XIV is due out in 2010, Versus will be sometime in 2011 now. Does anyone else find it odd that the spinoff will come out after the sequel?

The DLC news of the week is around the new WiiWare game, "Kumanage," dropping in Japan next week. It's two games in one, a puzzle game and a active-battle game, both using the Wiimote for core gameplay mechanics. It is also filed under the category "cute," which I know will shock the readership, with it being a WiiWare game and all. No word yet on exactly when it might come across the ocean, but it has been rated already by both the US and the European ratings commissions, so something later this summer is not entirely unlikely.

Finally, the unneeded accessory of the week award goes to this external speaker and DS stand, shaped like a Slime. I'm all for big Slimes - let's be honest, the Slime is probably the most iconic monster design in RPGs. This just seems like a huge, useless pain in the butt, though, does it not?

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, AndriaSang

After another brief dry spell in good Square Enix news, we're back with the Friday Tidbits again. I feel pretty confident that we're only a couple weeks away from a new blast of delicious news, though, as E3 is nearly upon us; the official conference starts on June 14, which is problematic given that this is also the first full week of the World Cup. Jerks. In this issue, we have news about how Squenix is a very healthy company, new info about the Western release of Birth By Sleep, some screenshots from the Final Fantasy XIV alpha release, a Squenix world record, some news not news about Final Fantasy Versus XIII (which still exists!), and a few other scattered release dates.

First off, if you might have been worried about Square Enix staying afloat with the mixed reviews of their in-house games, well, don't be. At the rate they're going, they'll have money to produce Final Fantasies up through XCVI, at least. Their top five games of their last fiscal year all sold over a million copies each for their year ending in April 2010, with three of them selling over three million apiece worldwide. That's not a low number of games, kids, and only one of them was not a Squenix IP.

Birth By Sleep, the newest Kingdom Hearts game is still coming, and now it's dated. It's coming September 7 (September 10 in Europe), and it is going to pack some high profile voice work, including Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill. If those two names don't pique your interest, how about James Woods? At the very least, that should appeal to hardcore Family Guy fans, right? If you're a KH fan without a PSP, Sony's even going to give you a $200 silver PSP bundle with the game, a nice big Memory Stick, and an unnamed movie. And it's not a PSP Go, so there's nothing to lose!

Everyone who got into the Final Fantasy XIV alpha is under a non-disclosure agreement. That means you're probably not going to get much info unless you know someone who really, really trusts you - however, Square Enix themselves released some screenshots this week. Might not be the most interesting information to come out about the game, but it's what you're going to get probably until at least E3.

Finally, you might have heard that our buddy Yoichi Wada stick his foot into it a bit this week, saying that the PlayStation 3-exclusive Final Fantasy Versus XIII might be on the table for a multiplatform release. Of course, since then, there's been some (probably Sony-suggested) spin that the initial statement doesn't necessarily mean anything at all. Since there's no release date for the game yet, it's hard to say right now one way or another. I doubt anything will come from it at E3, but Tokyo Game Show is a possibility.

Wrapping up, enjoy a couple more release dates. Siliconera has some release info you might have missed: the Japanese megahit Dragon Quest IX will be in North America on July 11th, with DLC to follow; The Four Heroes of Light, meanwhile, has been rated in Australia which means an English-language release is pending, and will almost certainly be popping up in Europe and North America sooner rather than later.

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, AndriaSang

Square Enix released its latest iPhone OS game since our last tidbits, a new IP called Chaos Rings. The game was developed with some of the developers responsible for the Wild ARMs series; with such a pedigree, you would assume that the game would be pretty special. And, if the early reviews are right, well, it kind of is within the scope of iPhone games. So far, nearly seven hundred reviewers on iTunes give the game an average of 4.5/5, and sites like Kotaku have plenty of good things to say as well. Visually, this game looks easily on par with console games of, say, eight years ago, and that alone will set it apart from most of its brethren (though it also might require fairly new Apple hardware to play at full strength). It also is a bit pricey for a iPhone game, at $12.99, but that still makes it a lot cheaper than a new game for your Nintendo or Sony handheld.

Final Fantasy XIII is already getting re-published in portions of Asia. To sweeten the deal for late adopters, they're getting a Lightning-themed PlayStation 3 controller in their bundle. It's nothing groundbreaking, just a Dual Shock in the general style that you might have seen before. Seems like the screenprint would wear off pretty quickly with it being on the handle like that, doesn't it?

As you no doubt know by now, Square Enix has become as big a name in games publishing as they have in games development, particularly in Japan, where they have released Western games such as Modern Warfare 2 on behalf of their original publishers. The "controversy" of games like MW2 might have led directly to our next tidbit—the company is soon to create a new imprint for the games that might be a bit extreme for the company's image in Japan. Called "Square Enix Extreme Edges," the label will be used exclusively for games that get Japan's equivalent of the ESRB "Mature" rating label. There appear to be no immediate games that will get the label.

In sales news, while Western gamers appear to be a bit reticent towards Nier, there's no such issue in Japan. The Japan-only PS3 game starring Nier, called Replicant, started off its lifespan at the top of the Famitsu sales charts. The 360 game, Gestalt (the one we'll be getting in the West), started in 11th place for the week—not bad, being for a console that doesn't sell all that well over there. If you want to get your hands on the hot Replicant, try PlayAsia, through our new affiliate partnership: Buy Nier Replicant. We'll be working to add more items from PlayAsia to the site as we can. Having bought from there myself in the past, it's a pretty great place to get all sorts of imported gaming accouterments that you can't get from AmaCoN. Among those items might be these Kingdom Hearts figures, which were announced this week for release in August in Japan. They'll be hard to come by here, I'm sure, but if we can find them on PlayAsia for you, we'll definitely get you hooked up.

Finally for these long-winded tidbits, we return to the Dragon Quest bar. This time, for a giant, slime-shaped meat bun. You can not even think about saying that isn't cool.

Source: iTunes, SiliconEra, Kotaku