News

First news tidbits for November; possibly also the start of the AmaCoN Holiday Rush™? Seriously, get all your friends and family to buy stuff from AmaCoN this holiday. It usually makes up about 30% of our revenue for the year.

Anyway, here are some Square Enix News Tidbits for you. With the launch of Final Fantasy XIII in Japan getting ever closer, Square Enix have announced the release date of the official soundtrack. There will be, kind of typically, two versions—a four disc standard and five disc limited edition, with the differences being packaging, an extra disc with parts or all of Episode Zero and of course availability. Both sets will be available on 27 January in Japan, and with only about $14 difference in cost, I predict that there will be a rush for the more special-er version.

For those who don't care about the Japanese accouterments, though, you can note that Yoichi Wada thinks that "progress is good" on the Western front, and that he thinks it's possible to see a launch either in Europe, North America, or both before the end of April 2010. That seems like marketing talk, and I would expect to be waiting a bit longer than that, personally. AmaCoN still has it for 20 June 2010, for instance.

On the business front, it seems that the layoffs previously reported are now mainly done, with a grand total of ten percent cut globally. Perhaps not surprisingly, revenues for the last half-year were also up by almost exactly a third; of course, our readers who know a bit about business also know that revenues are almost never the same as profits.



Source: GamesIndustry, Kotaku

Among the new downloadable PlayStation Network games released recently, Natsume slipped in a couple of moderately-recent entries from the venerable Harvest Moon series. The two specific titles were originally, of course, released for Sony systems; Innocent Life was originally released for PSP in the Spring of 2007 and PlayStation 2 last year, while Boy & Girl was also released for PSP in July of 2007.

Both games are available now via PSN for $14.99 apiece, likely a reasonable cost if you are a fan of the series but missed out on these games, as many folks might have given the relatively small user base for PSP and slowly dwindling user base for the PS2.

Source: RPGamer

A slightly abbreviated tidbits today, both because the good news is a bit thin this week and also because I'm not working today. Funny that I have more time to post the news when I'm at my office, right?

Let's start with the news that is my favorite for the week but has the least overall impact on the gaming world: the original Final Fantasy is now available for the Nintendo Virtual Console. For 500 points, you can play the true original version, with all of its (by today's standards, anyway) slow gameplay and clunky mechanics intact. Will users have any use for this release beyond nostalgia, with revised ports already available for no fewer than three platforms in North America? Probably not, but feel free to prove me wrong here, Wii owners. We... do have Wii owners who read the site, right?

Next up is a followup to last week's tidbits with the subbed Final Fantasy XIII trailer. This week you can get the real deal - an authentic English voice-acted trailer straight from Square Enix. Since the rest of the trailer is the same as you've no doubt seen by now, what do you think of the English dub? As usual for voice acting in Squenix games, it seems to be pretty polarizing—I personally didn't really expect too much, but it does seem like the syncing from voice to character action is a little worse in this video than I would have expected.

Finally, Square Enix released some early monster renders for Final Fantasy XIV this week. This is a nice small news item, and from what I hear several of these renders are pretty much just updates of existing designs from Final Fantasy XI, but they're pretty cool nonetheless. I am a particular fan of the crazy zebra-dragon-velociraptor hybrid and the cactuar's pimp strut. And that marlboro? That thing is legitimately terrifying.

Oh, and just to see if anyone actually reads these posts, I want to point out that you need to start taking quizzes during October if you want to be qualified to win the prize at the New Year. You have to have at least ten quizzes in your name by then to qualify, and if you miss the ones that are open right now, there's no way to catch up!


Source: Nintendo, Kotaku, GameTrailers

At least three shops are offering unique pre-order bonuses in the States for Dissidia: Final Fantasy, which ships on 25 August in North America. Obviously, pre-order bonuses are nothing new, but the fact that there are already three announced, and you can only get them at particular retailers, is a bit more novel (and, dare I say it, moneygrubbing?).

If you're looking to get a pre-order in, here are your options: Best Buy is offering a desk calendar; GameStop has custom cover slipcases that, it appears, slide over the top of the retail case for the game; AmaCoN will ship you a CD with musical selections from the game. And, since we play favorites here, we wholeheartedly support you getting the CD.

Source: Square Enix Members Blog

That's right, all of you Wii owners out there can see what Cecil and Rosa's son Ceodore as well as the rest of the Final Fantasy IV cast's progeny are up to today, by downloading Final Fantasy IV: The After Years for 800 Wii points (approximately $8 US).

Originally released for Japanese mobile phones, The After Years is the first of an unknown number of chapters of a new adventure. The planet's second moon has reappeared out of nowhere, and a mysterious blue-clad woman is attempting to steal the world's eight crystals. Kain has also exiled himself to Mount. Ordeals, where he hopes to return as someone cleansed of his inner darkness. If you want to find out how all of this new plot goes down, then it's time to get downloading.

Source: Kotaku

Could this be the start of a trend? First Japanese cellphone-exclusives The Third Birthday and Final Fantasy Agito XIII receive PSP ports, and now we have a WiiWare port for the cellphone-exclusive Final Fantasy IV The After: Tsuki no Kikan.

This sequel to Final Fantasy IV is planned to be released in monthly installments over Japanese cellphones. Virtually all of the surviving characters from Final Fantasy IV make appearances, with a few of their offspring as playable characters (Cecil's son Theodor and Yang's daughter Ursula). Kain makes a key appearance as one of the game's major antagonists. The game uses a traditional SNES-era Final Fantasy interface, with 2D sprites, the ATB system, and random battles. The stats of players and appearances of monsters vary on lunar phases, which can be changed by spending the night at an inn. In addition, players can execute powerful "band" attacks that require any two players taking action, similar to Twin attacks in Final Fantasy IV DS or Dual Techs in Chrono Trigger.

The ESRB (North America's rating organization for videogames, the equivalent of Europe's PEGI or Japan's CERO) has published ratings for Final Fantasy IV: The After Years as a WiiWare game dated for 2009. This is all the information we have on a non-Japanese release, and hopefully we'll have more information soon.

Source: Kotaku