News

GamesAreFun.com reports that Enix has purchased Squaresoft, and that Square & Enix have merged to form a new company called ''Square Enix,'' headed by Square President Yoichi Wada.

To any RPG fan, this is GIGANTIC news. Square and Enix are the two biggest RPG developers in the world today, and have been in competition with each other for years, mainly because of Square's ''Final Fantasy'' series and Enix's ''Dragon Quest'' series.

The reason for this huge merger? Square and Enix are merging to cut down development costs, which have become higher in the industry recently.

Enix will primarily be the "controller group" of the merger, even though they are the smaller company. Square shareholders will receive 0.81 a share, since it is a larger company than Enix.

This merger will help out both companies, as Square has been suffering some huge losses since releasing the Final Fantasy motion picture, and Enix has never really been big in America. Thus, this merger will help to soothe Square's profit losses and help establish Enix in the States.

Once again, Square Enix will be presided over by Yoichi Wada of Squaresoft, and the chairman of the company will be Enix's representative director chairman, Yasuhiro Fukushima. The merger is set to take place on April 1st, 2003, the fisrt day of the new fiscal year.

Source: GamesAreFun.com

FFX, the newest Final Fantasy to hit the American and European shores, will eventually have an album out. It's a Vocal album, as is mentioned in RPGamer:

http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q4-2002/110902a.html

Apparently this is not your ordinary Final Fantasy soundtrack; it has the voice actors from FFX acting out scenes that were not in the actual game itself. Possible connections to FFX-2 as well. Could this be a form of advertisement to make sure FF fans are hyped for FFX-2?

Release dates in Japan are set for Dec. 16th, no word yet on the rest of the world.

What do you get when you cross a Final Fantasy character with, apparently, Lara Croft, and add a Western look for fun? This, apparently:

http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/ev/tgs/990-yuna.jpg

Not that this is altogether a bad thing. It's merely the plans for FFX-2, which is a direct sequence to the popular game FFX for PS2. With new functions, giving some of the game a more of a Xenogears feel according to the preview, and an updated outlook on the world clearly from the impact of the ending of the last game, this should be quite the interesting sequel. Here's another picture of Yuna, totting guns and looking nifty. (Check out the long hair.)

http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/im5/821.jpg

Release dates are still unclear, but hopefully Japan doesn't try to keep this all to itself. (Link to News Article below)

http://www.gamesarefun.com/cgi-bin....,15879,

Here's another picture, too:
http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/im5/820.jpg

Skies of Arcadia, originally on the Dream Cast, is now being re-released for the GameCube. In time for the new year, it will be out in North America sometime in January of 2003.

From what I can tell of the article, the game is still the same in plot and format, and is still a great RPG if you hadn't played it already on the DC. It may not be a Final Fantasy, but it's still worth a try ^-^


http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q3-2002/091302c.html

Gamefront reports that Square's Kindom Hearts' (being made in cooperation with Disney) limited edition release, called Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix, will be released in Japan on December 26th, 2002. Kingdom Hearts features characters from Disney and Squaresoft, together in a single adventure to stop what's known as "The Heartless." Some of the features include summoning Disney characters such as The Genie or Dumbo to help you in battle.

This is pretty good news for those looking forward to this game. December is only a few short months away, and the US release of the normal version is imminent. Personally, I'm looking forward to the game, so yay.

Courtesy of the mighty and great OmniPlay Gaming, here is the very first screens of Final Fantasy Tactics on Game Boy Advance. The game takes place in a modern world at first, until the characters are whisked away to Ivalice following an incident. The game has three new systems according to this scan. Looks to be another WINNER from Square! I can't wait!

FFT Scan