News

There's a whole bunch of fun little news snippets for this past week-ish, so let's get at it!

First off, there's the fact that FFVI has been released on the virtual console, as already posted by Blitzsage in the forums (no such thing as a fanboy acting too quickly :D).

To celebrate the series' 25th anniversary, Dragon Quests I, II and III will be released as a package for the Wii. The set will also include Dragon Quest X bonus footage and will see a September 15th release date in Japan. Not sure yet for the North American or European audiences.

This year will also mark the 20th anniversary of the Mana series, meaning that, unsurprisingly, Square Enix will be celebrating once again with some type of promotion. In this case, it is a gigantic soundtrack that will be doing the honors: a 19-disc, 21,000-yen (that's about $260), spiffy lookin' soundtrack set that will be available for sale in Japan on September 14.

There's some notable staffer news as well; Square Enix's Yasumi Matsuno, the man behind Final Fantasy XII, Tactics Ogre and Vagrant Story (one of my personal favorites) has jumped ship in favor of Level-5. The move was made in order to achieve more creative freedom; he wants to be able to make whatever he wants. Matsuno has already begun work on a new project, one he hopes will be played by children.

In addition to these, there is quite a lot of new or recently-reviewed FFXIII-2 news to report, but I'll hold off on that until tomorrow. Toodle-oo!

Source: Andriasang, Andriasang, Kotaku

It's finally summer, and, in addition to love, a bit of post-E3 Square Enix news is in the air.

First off, the folks over at SE have hired artists to create original pieces based on Deus Ex: Human Revolution based on the game's futuristic setting and moral issues. These artists have each been asked to create one poster design relating in one aspect or another to body augmentation. Proceeds from the art, which will be displayed in New York City for two weeks starting on July 28th, will be donated to education in the arts.

There's been some speculation regarding whether Dragon Quest X will be announced for the Wii U. Series composer Koichi Sugiyama recently stated that he was working for a new DQ soundtrack to be completed by 2012. While this doesn't necessarily point to anything specific, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada, when questioned about DQX at Square Enix's last shareholder meeting, said that he hoped to be able to release the game for both the Wii and Wii U. Ideally, Wada said that he would like to see the tenth installment of the franchise released as a Wii U launch title.

Many other questions were fielded at the shareholder meeting. One of these was the PSN outage: how much the company had lost due to the situation and whether or not they would seek compensation. Wada also announced that Square Enix would be working on ports of the Mana series. He recognized that the newest Front Mission title got terrible reviews and said that he wished they would have spent more time working on the game. On the brighter side, he expressed optimism towards the company's various forays into the realm of social networking.

In somewhat more trivial news, it appears that Square Enix has quietly uploaded both Final Fantasy VII and VIII to Steam. Don't get too excited, though; these ports will likely never see the light of day. Or the light of your basement--whatever. The steam files are slightly improved copies of the Eidos-released PC versions, improvements which were meant to boost compatibility on modern systems. That said, the files haven't been edited in over a year, leading us to believe that, for whatever reason, Square Enix has given up on the project.

That's it for now, we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for more SE news over the summer months.

Source: Destructoid, Kotaku, Andriasang

I know you're here at the Caves of Narshe because you play RPGs, specifically Square Enix RPGs, specifically Final Fantasy games. Well, if you've not been following E3 this week, I've got news for you: there's precious little of that to be had here today. With E3 wrapped, here's what Square Enix hit heavy.

The biggest coverage to come out of the conference had everything to do with Eidos. The Tomb Raider reboot, which really did look very nice, got a lot of press (including a long-form controlled demo early in Microsoft's keynote). That game is still scheduled to come out next year, but the progress so far looked pretty impressive for a game that far out. Later in E3, the Hitman series took center stage, with a big crowd for the debut trailer. Absolution, the new title, is also due out in 2012. Deus Ex was also everywhere - a third title that a couple years ago would have been part of Eidos' booth, but fortuitously has fallen under Square Enix' umbrella due to smart corporate buyouts.

For the core RPG/Final Fantasy output of E3 2011, you really can't look much further than Final Fantasy XIII-2. We reported earlier in the week that a new, longer trailer debuted during E3, and while I admit that I haven't watched it (as I'm afraid of spoilers, since I still have yet to beat the first one!), it seems to have at least generated buzz, though of course it's not universally positive. One thing that surprised me, though, is that the game was actually playable at E3, as evidenced by these videos posted by Kotaku earlier in the week. RPGSite managed to get an interview with the director and producer of the game, as well, during the tumult of E3.

There was no news about Type-0 or the new Kingdom Hearts that I've seen come from E3, which is very disappointing. I can't speak for whether they simply had no presence at E3, or if the presence they did have was merely news old enough that it wasn't worth reporting, but there was almost certainly nothing new at all to appear. However, the official Type-0 site updated as E3 was closing, with some new screenshots and character reveals, so all is not lost there.

In other happy news emerging from E3, Square Enix announced a big, round number from the Final Fantasy series, and you have to admit it's impressive: the Final Fantasy series as a whole has now shipped over one hundred million copies worldwide. That's more than four million copies of the games every single year - maybe that's not a huge feat given the many remakes over the years, but you have to think back to the eighties and early nineties, when there just weren't that many from which to choose. The company, wisely, didn't talk about whether that includes just the core numbered series or also sideline series like Tactics, the Final Fantasy VII Compilation, or games that were called "Final Fantasy" in some regions but not others.

Even knowing that milestone, you'd be forgiven for being generally disappointed in Square Enix at E3 this year. I would have expected a stronger showing myself, if I'm perfectly honest. But, if you're unhappy with the company's performance, you're not the only one. Even at least one Square Enix executive shares concern over the company's core game franchises, going so far as to call the lack of Japanese output from the company at E3 "humiliating." Is there a way to bounce back from this? Koji Taguchi, the aforementioned executive, is clearly worried about it. Got any advice for him that doesn't start and end with "remake Final Fantasy VII?"

That does it for E3 this year, as far as CoN is concerned. Hope you enjoyed our recaps and editorials, and we'll be back with more of the same when it's time for the Tokyo Game Show in a couple months, where one hopes Squenix will be back with more gusto. If I missed anything good, make sure to respond and set me straight!

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

Square Enix are preparing for E3, of course; it officially starts next Tuesday. For us, they're mainly doing it with a microsite that, as of this writing, doesn't work. If you care to find a metaphor in that for your faith in the company, well, I won't stop you. Hopefully it comes back online soon, though, as the site last year was really pretty nice, as I recall.

Square Enix are only talking about a few of the games that they'll be showing, and I haven't yet found any mention of a standalone presser that will be aired anywhere public. I don't believe they did one last year, either, so we'll have to feast on scraps that we get second-hand. For now, though, we do know of several games that will appear; of most interest to RPG fans will be Final Fantasy XIII-2 and WAKFU. However, Tomb Raider, the new Hitman, Deus Ex, Dead Island, and the new 3DS game Heroes of Ruin also headline the offering. There's no mention of Type-0 or Dream Drop Distance in the press release, but there's little doubt that they'll be in the booth in some fashion, surely, along with some other big-ticket games that escape my mind at the moment.

As for CoN, we're going to cover E3 the way we did last year, I think, as much as possible. That means that we'll be watching the big three press conferences in chat, as well as posting live thoughts about the offerings to Twitter and Facebook. After each of the big pressers, one of us will write up a kinda-bloggy recap for CoN news as well. If you want to participate, all you have to do is follow us on Twitter (@cavesofnarshe) or on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/cavesofnarshe), come to chat to make snide comments about the games you're seeing, or watch this space for the wrap-up news.

If you're on Facebook or Twitter, we'd love it if you'd reference us in your own tweets or posts about E3, or if you'd retweet or share our comments to your own network. Help us keep our following growing by making sure all seven of your friends know about us!

Source: Square Enix, Kotaku

Slowly but surely, Distant Worlds is becoming less distant to more and more Final Fantasy fans, as the tour adds more dates that cover more geographical areas in North America. Sorry, overseas fans, but no new dates for you in this update; however, as consolation, the DVDs I mentioned in my last Distant Worlds post are now available from AmaCoN US and AmaCoN UK.

A brief rundown of the new dates:

• Houston, 16 July 2011
• Vancouver, 27 July 2011 (with Uematsu)
• Baltimore, 9 and 10 September 2011 (with Uematsu)
• Los Angeles, 5 November 2011
• Kitchener, Ontario, 28 February 2012
• St. Louis, Missouri, 23 and 24 March, 2012
• Toronto, 31 March 2012 (with Uematsu)

For presale dates and all other information, hit the Distant Worlds site below.

Source: Distant Worlds