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Kingdom Hearts 3 is finally released, and as a followup Square Enix has announced a new Kingdom Hearts Orchestra tour in a number of worldwide locations starting in May. We've talked about the orchestra on the forums before during their previous tour last year, but now there are a lot of new dates for 2019:

• Singapore, May 18
• Chicago, June 1
• Orlando, June 22
• New York, June 28 and 29
• Atlanta, September 14
• Paris, September 28
• Sydney, October 19
• Dallas, October 26
• London, November 17

Tickets look pretty pricey for the American shows; a spotcheck says that the lowest cost available is around $80 for a couple cities, and closer to $90 for others. If you're interested, though, tickets for all dates are on sale now.

On the subject of Square Enix music, though, while we're here - A New World announced recently one new date in Seattle on April 27th.

Source: Kingdom Hearts Orchestra Tickets, A New World

We're winding down this year, so it's a good time for the folks behind Distant Worlds to add a lot of new shows for 2019. Good news if you're one of our international readers, as most of the new shows being added are outside of North America this time. I'm sure more here in the States and possibly Canada will be coming soon, and there's still one new domestic date that I hadn't seen before, but for now here's a big list of mostly European show additions.

• Bangkok: December 1 and 2
• Nashville: January 22, 2019
• Hamburg: Valentine's Day! Adorable Date Night Opportunity!
• Berlin: February 15
• Dusseldorf: February 16
• Geneva: March 22
• Milan: March 23
• Rome: March 24

The shows in Hamburg, Geneva, and Rome are new cities for the tour. In Bangkok, Yoko Shimomura is scheduled to attend (remember, Nobuo Uematsu is still recuperating his health). Tickets for all of these shows are on sale now!

A New World has added even more dates than Distant Worlds, in other far-flung locales, particularly in the South Pacific:

• Christchurch, New Zealand: November 9
• Auckland: November 10
• Singapore: November 17
• Sydney: November 23
• Brisbane: November 24
• Adelaide: November 27
• Canberra: November 29
• Melbourne: November 30
• Perth: December 1
• Los Angeles: February 23, 2019
  (with two shows on the date)
• Atlanta: May 26

Tickets for all of these shows are on sale as well; the Atlanta show is included with registration for MomoCon.

Source: Distant Worlds, A New World

For gamers out there still enjoying Final Fantasy XIV, Square Enix has just released a long-awaited companion app to streamline the gameplay experience. It's available free for both iOS and Android, and provides an app interface to a number of useful features, enough so that it's hard to pick out which might be the best. Players with active subscriptions can chat with other players from the app, organize event reminders and send invites to friends to help plan raids or general gameplay sessions, organize their inventory, and even buy and sell items in the open market and submit bug reports.

Of course, these features are useful mainly to active players, which is why an active subscription is required. However, if your subscription lapses, the app will keep your chat in storage for up to 30 days while you potentially reactivate. Very cool!

Source: Final Fantasy XIV Official Site

The Pre-E3 Kingdom Hearts Orchestra World Tour concert in Los Angeles was last night, after which Square Enix announced that Kingdom Hearts III finally had a release date. Unfortunately for CoN readers looking to get the game under their Christmas tree or other denominational holiday apparatus, that date is not going to be in 2018. However, it won't be that much more of a wait - Asia will get the game on January 25 for both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and North America and Europe will get it on January 29.

The announcement was shown in a new trailer exclusive to the concert, of which the highlight clearly must be Sora cooking with Remy from Pixar's Ratatouille. Tetsuya Nomura tweeted after the announcement that there would be more information and more trailers at E3 on the show floor; I expect that this new trailer will be among them.

Source: Gematsu

We've got some new concert news coming up for 2018, and it's been a while since we've done a major update. So, buckle up and hope for some new concerts coming your way soon!

The newest announcement for Distant Worlds is Cleveland, in what I believe is a first for the series. Ohio fans, be on the lookout with tickets already on sale for the June show. The rest of the 2018 scheduled shows lay out like this:

• Paris, April 21 (Matinee and Evening Shows)
• Vancouver, June 1
• Cleveland, June 16
• San Francisco, August 4
• Durham, North Carolina, October 13

Durham is also a new location for the tour, so I hope that's good news for some of you! At the moment, Uematsu is confirmed solely for the Paris shows.

For A New World, we just got an announcement for a new show in Boston this week. Tickets are already on sale for the April 20th show, and VIP tickets are available. The rest of the year for the smaller chamber music series looks this way:

• Honolulu, March 4 at Kawaii Kon
• Quebec City, April 7
• Boston, April 20
• Prague, May 5
• Vienna, May 6

I literally can not pick which of those cities would be the best to see this show - seeing a chamber orchestra in Prague or Vienna just seems right, and who could complain about seeing Final Fantasy music performed in Hawaii? - but alas, I'll be attending none of these.

Last night, a European rating for Final Fantasy IX on PlayStation 4 appeared on the PEGI site, stoking rumors of the game getting a worldwide re-release. Today, at the pre-Tokyo Game Show PlayStation conference, those rumors were quickly confirmed, with the game being released worldwide today.

This release of the game is based upon the Windows/Steam version released last year, which is itself based on the earlier mobile port. That means you can expect higher-resolution FMV and models, as well as all the other upgrades in those previous releases. It also appears that you can expect to be locked into the game's original 4:3 aspect ratio.

Until the 26th, the game will be listed at $16.79, after which it will rise to its standard price of $20.99. Packaged with the download will be a Final Fantasy IX dashboard theme and eight themed PSN avatars. Possibly worth it if you're not a PC gamer, as it remains a great game; for me, I just kind of want the theme without buying the game again.

Source: Gematsu