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Nintendo put on one heckuva show today. It honestly blew Microsoft's out of the water, in my opinion, and it even gave some real CoN news to post. The games looked solid - there was no Wii Music to be found this year. They led with the new Zelda, which looked pretty solid, despite some significant technological problems in the live demo with Miyamoto. Mario's new sports game had dodgeball in it, therefore it wins by default. The not-exactly-news Wiimake of Goldeneye starring Daniel Craig looked like everything it should be. Epic Mickey was one of the best looking games I have seen ever for the Wii, but the new Donkey Kong Country and Kirby, each with their unique styles, give Mickey a run on style alone.

And did you see the 3DS? Did you? Kid Icarus launch title. Remember, kids, #welovepit. It's got a larger upper screen than the DS, an analog nub, variable levels of 3D for titles that support it, and even a stereoscopic camera on the shell that will let you take stereoscopic 3D photos to view on the 3D screen.

But more than that, there's some Square Enix news tied in: Square Enix is one of the twenty third-party developers who are already working on 3DS titles, and Nintendo showed a Kingdom Hearts logo on screen during the presentation. We have no other details as yet - will it be a remixed version of an existing KH game? A brand new game in the continuum? Maybe Squenix will dribble out some details this week.

Wasn't the only RPG news that Nintendo covered, though, and from a CoN perspective, that alone blows away anything Microsoft had to offer. Dragon Quest IX is coming in 26 days, and while Reggie Fils-Aime didn't throw out any real information that we didn't already know, but to see the release get as much love as it did was impressive on Nintendo's part for a Squenix fan. The other RPG that got good face time was the Golden Sun sequel, also on DS. There was a good, solid minute of staged gameplay video on hand there.


Quote of the session, since I can't use one of my own, has to go to Gabe, who said "I hope [the G4 anchors] ask Reggie why there's not Mother 3 in America." Good question, no? It should be noted that Gabe also continued with a string of profanity about Reggie that we shouldn't reprint here.

And here's a tweet from the CoN Twitter to wrap up, why not?

Yeah, there was a lot of stuff at the Microsoft E3 press conference that will appeal to a LOT of people. I know this. Gears 3, Halo: Reach, Metal Gear, Crytek's new game... those are going to move a lot of copies. More power to all of you who want those games. For the core CoN audience, though, well, there wasn't all that much. The things I saw that were closest to RPGs were Fable III and possibly the Star Wars Kinect game if they include some good Knights of the Old Republic bits in there. (Don't forget, it was announced last night that Kinect is the real name for Natal.)

Other than that, though, not much for the Square-Enix fan to get excited over, I don't think. I think the best we could have hoped for was that Final Fantasy Versus XIII would break exclusivity the way that Final Fantasy XIII did, but there was no hide nor hair of Squenix anywhere to be seen. Not shocking, but still disappointing, no?

So, that said, feel free to discuss your favorite and least favorite bits of that conference. I'll circle back with mine in a moment since that's hardly front page news.

Nearly forgot, the best CoN user quote from this press conference has to go to Olly from chat. I had to clean it up a bit, because after all, it was from chat, but here's the paraphrase: "It's only a matter of time before there's an achievement for fondling yourself on Kinect for five or more people." Kudos, Olly, I guess.

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

As of this Monday, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) agreed to hear a case related to video games arising in California. Instead of sending the law back to the 9th Circuit Court of California (which struck down the video game law), SCOTUS will review the decision some time after their next session begins October 4.

The law, authored by California State Senator Leland Yee, made it illegal to rent or sell violent video games to minors with a $1,000 penalty against the retailers. The video game violence bill was passed through the Californian legislature in 2005, and since then has passed through the U.S. District Court and the 9th Circuit Court. Each court has struck down the law, arguing that the legislation violated the First Amendment, citing video games as protected speech, just as movies and music have been. The lower courts have also denied certain studies relating video games to violence, stating that as of the moment no studies conclusively find that video games directly cause violence.

The name of the case will be as follows:

SCHWARZENEGGER, GOV. OF CA V. ENTERTAINMENT MERCHANTS, ET AL.

Now, despite the comedic irony that the Terminator is sponsoring anti-video game legislation, this is a serious case. The question will be whether the Supreme Court will grant the same protections to video games as they and the lower courts have music and movies. And this is very likely to ignite a debate about video games and violence again.

Source: GamePolitics, SupremeCourt.gov

Last week was another pretty quiet one, so I've lumped everything into another two week span. Plus, last Friday I was working madly on some other CoN development that I'll roll out eventually. Every tidbits, I start with the excuses. It's fun.

Let's kick it off with the best reason ever to go to Japan: a Dragon Quest-themed bar in Tokyo, opening next week. I would love to see if they have Slime-themed adult beverages. Please tell me there will be Slime-themed adult beverages. Perhaps a Green Slimetini.

From a different perspective in Square Enix corporate life, it's recently come to light that Yoichi Wada isn't pleased with the Japanese game retail industry and its xenophobia. Of course, some level of xenophobia in Japan is hardly anything new, so why should Square Enix care? Well, it's because now they're in charge of publishing games like Modern Warfare 2 in Japan. Now it all makes sense.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that Kingdom Hearts is massive in Japan, speaking of the gaming motherland. It's Disney! It's Square Enix! The buying queue will be massive! And, it was for Birth by Sleep; the newest edition of the Kingdom Hearts series, for PSP, came out last week in Japan and promptly sold almost half a million discs, blowing every other game out of the water in terms of that week's sales. Will it have lifetime sales better than the game it replaced at the top of the charts, New Super Mario Bros. Wii? Probably not, but it's still pretty impressive.

So, with all that non-Final Fantasy stuff out of the way, I'm sure you guys who aren't already miserable from thinking about Final Fantasy XIII want to hear more, right? Bam: here it is. First, here's the first new trailer with the Leona Lewis track and English voice acting, first linked to us by BlitzSage in the delicious knot of rage that is our thread discussing Leona Lewis' involvement in the Western game. Still want more after that? Well, Square Enix this week (for some reason) put some PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s on a bus in California and drove it around so players could get an early look at parts of the North American game. No word yet when or if the content on the bus will be distributed over Xbox Live or PlayStation Home for other users, but the bus tour ends tomorrow. 1up says the game seems to run just as nicely on the lowly 360 as it does the PS3, though this isn't exactly a side-by-side comparison. Honestly, though, did anyone think that Square Enix would botch the cross-platform nature of this game? It's been a lightning rod (yay puns!) ever since it was announced, and the experience on 360 is simply something that Squenix can't afford to screw up. Also, according to Kotaku by way of Japanese Final Fantasy site FF Reunion, Final Fantasy XIII could have been a lot longer. They cut so much out, in fact, that the scraps on the floor could have been reassembled to create another full game, according to art director Isamu Kamikokuryou. I've wondered aloud already: maybe that's how they plan on creating the seemingly-off-the-radar FFXIII Versus, eh?

If you're still up for this game, though, don't forget that it comes out in about seven and a half weeks. And we know this is true, because now we know it's gone Gold - for those not familiar with shipping software, that's just the industry term for "the game is done, yo." This even includes the lip-syncing as seen in the aforementioned trailer, which, as you no doubt all know, has sometimes been a bit wonky for Square Enix games. So, whether you're still excited or not, this is still looking like a big deal, and it's getting ever closer. Enjoy, whatever your perspective.

Source: Kotaku, GamePro, 1up

Missed a couple weeks of the tidbits again; I'm sure you have all been pretty busy yourselves, and then there's the part where you don't really read these anyway, so it's all good. If you haven't been looking, though, you probably missed some good Square Enix information that's come out over the holidays, so let's catch you up.

The release of Final Fantasy XIII in Japan doesn't mean the media blitz is over; the release was predictably huge, and Square Enix are laboring hard to continue to push the merch, with a long-format commercial airing to promote the soundtrack, available in a few weeks. Here in the States, the Square Enix Members Blog is offering a sweepstakes to win jewelry and accessories as designed for Final Fantasy XIII characters.

For the Wii gamers, Crystal Chronicles came out on the day after Christmas. It's, probably unsurprisingly, getting mixed reviews so far, though there are obviously a wide array of folks out there who have enjoyed the Crystal Chronicles games so far. If you're one of them, perhaps you should take a visit to the General Squenix forum here at CoN and talk about your experience a bit.

Final Fantasy XIV is in the ascendancy now that Thirteen is out the door; while it still doesn't have a more specific release date than "2010," there's a lot of new media coming out to show a bit more about what you'll be looking at as you play. Kotaku brought us some new scenery-style shots just before Christmas, and on Christmas Eve published some from the character creator that, probably in a manner that won't shock the cynics, seems to focus on thin, attractive human females.

To wrap up the news you might have missed, check out Slime Curling as a minigame in the remake of Dragon Quest VI. I might be the only person outside of Canada who likes curling, so maybe I'm biased, but this sounds like a great idea to me. Also, Nomura has gotten his name on a new patent application that has detailed flowcharts and illustrations describing a new kind of RPG combat system. The application is platform-agnostic, but one of the illustrations has a system that looks a lot like a PSP... Finally, the free Chocobo pet on which we previously reported has finally come around, at least for some of us. I got the code for mine emailed to me on the 30th, and let me tell you, it's adorable.

Do any of you remember the CoNtest I announced a few months back when we re-released CoN quizzes? Hey, that ended on New Year's Eve - I'll announce our winner in just a tick.