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In an interview with the French videogame website Jeuxvideo, Nobuo Uematsu said that he would not be working on the remake of Final Fantasy 7 "at all."

It's hard to know exactly how to feel about this. FF7 boasts, after all, one of the best-liked of Uematsu's soundtracks; it seems odd to not have the legendary composer involved, even in a supervising or purely symbolic/honorary role. On the other hand, the remake may well not actually require any new composition, in which case Square Enix have already proved themselves perfectly capable of remastering and re-recording soundtracks without the oversight of original composers.

Uematsu's last major composition project for Square Enix was the soundtrack for Final Fantasy XIV back in 2010 (though he has also been involved in music for its expansions); since then he has headed up several soundtracks for Sakaguchi's Mistwalker studio, and he is currently listed as lead composer for the Kickstarter-funded Project Phoenix.

Source: Siliconera

If Square Enix were Apple, they would have had the HD Remake done when they announced it, and it would have just shown up in the PlayStation Network store during the presentation. What's really happened, though, is that an unannounced port of the newest PC version of Final Fantasy VII has appeared for iOS devices, at least in New Zealand; regular readers of CoN news will recall that iOS releases tend to start there and appear in other locales going westward over the next day or two.

The release trailer doesn't seem to make anything clear regarding how the game works. There are no visible touch controls shown in any of the clips, which are mostly clips of FMV cutscenes. However, Engadget reports that instead of reconfiguring the game to be more touch-friendly, the game will have a virtual joypad on screen. I personally suspect that the game will remain in the standard 4:3 ratio, leaving room on the sides of the screen for controls, at least for phones. If you've already gotten the game on your iOS device, perhaps you can fill us in - the New Zealand price has come in at $19.99, so I can't say that I'm up for it just yet.

This version of the game will include a few cheats by default, such as the ability to max our all character stats with the push of a button, and the ability to turn off random encounters. This will essentially allow the player to treat the game as a Final Fantasy VII slideshow if desired, with most of the gaming elements replaced with short bursts between cutscenes.

The game is supported only by iOS 8, and the hardware required appears to be of the iPhone 5s generation, meaning phones and tablets roughly two years old and newer. There's no indication of an Android version at this time.

Source: Engadget

Yeah, of course you heard, duh. And you probably heard also that there will be changes coming to the new version, and we're not yet sure what most of them are. So, the CoNcast Team jumped at the chance to do some supposition while we wait for something more visual or playable, and we recorded an episode with our thoughts. Listen now, to be sure you can point out all the ways in which we were wrong later.

Also listen to more talk about Four Job Fiesta, as I played my FJF run and streamed it to Twitch as we recorded. It was a trainwreck.

Source: The CoNcast on iTunes, The CoNcast Subscription Feed, This Episode

I don't even get to watch E3 live this year, for the first time in at least five years. I'm on the road this week, but I had to pop in for this news: Final Fantasy VII, after all the non-starts, jokes, trolls, and general stupidity, Final Fantasy VII is being remade.

The details were announced at Sony's E3 presser tonight, and as such it was made clear that one could "play it first" on Playstation 4. That of course leads one to believe that other platforms will become available; both Windows and Xbox One would likely be no-brainers.

Some kindly soul has already ripped the trailer from the stream: enjoy.



Source: Kotaku

That's right, another great moment (read: not so much) in Final Fantasy VII Compilation history. At Sony's Playstation Experience event this Saturday, Square Enix big-man Shinji Hashimoto (corporate executive of the company's Production Department #1) announced that the PS4 would be seeing Final Fantasy VII, in re-release - not, repeat, not remake - form.

This prompted lots of people to all sorts of grumbling, probably because it was announced with the worst delivery possible. Hashimoto announced the title ambiguously enough that it can easily be mistaken mistaken for the announcement of an actual remake; that is, just before showing a trailer that made evident the fact that we would only be getting those same old beloved, clunky polygons ported over to a new box.

The company, understandably, is getting some (largely good-humored... maybe) flack for the move. We've certainly had a tendency here at CoN to be critical of Square Enix's money-grabbing tendencies when it comes to re-(re-re-re-re-re-)releases, but it stands to fact that these ports remain an important part of the company's profits - if they weren't, we wouldn't continue seeing them. And while some of these purchases are likely old fans re-buying, I'd be willing to bet they're reaching a lot of new audiences this way as well. To further play devil's advocate, Hashimoto is clearly not in perfect command of his English. All the same - let's rehearse that delivery a bit more next time. For the sake of my heart. My achy breaky heart.

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, series producer Yoshinori Kitase has expressed interest in returning the core Final Fantasy series to the Windows platform. Beyond the MMOs, XI and XIV, a new game in the series has not been published to the Windows desktop OS since Final Fantasy VIII. It's clear, though, that the company maintains some interest in the platform with releases from other series like Deus Ex and Tomb Raider, not to mention the recent re-releases of Final Fantasy VII and VIII to Windows last year.

While no games from the Final Fantasy XIII series were released for the platform, Kitase reminds Eurogamer that the original XIII development took place in a Windows environment, so the notion of a release was not restricted by the development itself but instead Squenix' own market analysis and concerns about DRM. Kitase stops well short of promising a release of Final Fantasy XV via Steam, but it's clear from his words that the interest is there and that a release could easily be in the cards if the numbers look to work in the company's favor.

Source: Eurogamer