News

First off, some sentimental news: the Playstation 2 has finally come to the end of its sales lifespan in Japan. The system will still be available in many regions worldwide, however. If you're reading this in Brazil, for instance, the PS2 was only first made available to you in 2009. Desculpa.

Speaking of the PS2, Square Enix's long-running MMO native to that system, Final Fantasy XI, will be getting yet another expansion on March 26th to the tune of $29.99. The expansion, however, will only be available to westerners on PC and Xbox. If you're interested in taking this opportunity to first start playing Square Enix's MMO that worked the first time, a bundle edition of the original game and the other four expansions will be made available as well.

Next up, super important news from FFXIV: A Realm Reborn: THERE ARE BABY BEHEMOTHS. If you're wondering why this is such fantastic news, it's only because you haven't yet clicked on the first source below. Seriously. Cutest things ever.

In more serious news concerning FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, Square Enix has released a timetable for beta testing and debugging. Beta will begin in February with the PC version only, with PS3 beta being added in later. The plan is divided into four phases, each of which involves an increased number of available worlds and accessible features. Each phase will last somewhere around three weeks, followed by a 1-2 week session of debugging. Take my word for it, it's a rather detailed plan.

Square Enix is preparing to introduce a new bonus for those in the Japanese Square Enix Members program: a browser-based game in which Members avatars fight against various enemies from the Final Fantasy series. As said, it appears to be Japan-only, but there's always the chance that we'll see it over here if it's successful.

Finally, some Lightning Returns: FFXIII news. Lightning has been and fought for a lot of things over the course of her trilogy. In a recent Famitsu interview, Lightning's final role was revealed: liberator. If that sounds a bit odd, given that she spent her first title overthrowing a couple gods and rejecting 'divine' missions, you aren't alone. Now, though, she's working for a good god, Bhunivelze, and her goal is not to destroy the world as a sacrifice but to save as many as possible from the impending destruction of the world (the thirteen days thing we've reported on previously), liberating them to a new world.

Source: Siliconera, Siliconera, Siliconera

Square Enix deployed their now-pretty-typical "hey, we released a new game" video yesterday to announce the worldwide release of Final Fantasy IV for iOS (yours for the low price of $16.99 US!).

The video is pretty standard fare, nothing particularly exciting if you've see the Nintendo DS version before; however, what has people talking is the last few seconds. If you watch to the end, you'll see a bit of crowing about a "Final Fantasy mobile revolution" and the Final Fantasy V logo. This appears to confirm that at least Final Fantasy V is coming to iOS sometime in the future, and the text below saying "and more..." would seem to imply that V is not the end. Final Fantasy VI would be the obvious "more" there, but could there be others?

Not only that, what might we see out of these? Will these be ports of SNES? Game Boy Advance? Could it even be a 3D treatment of each game, which has long been rumored but never executed? And, if it's the 3D option, will we see them also on the Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita? That would certainly be fairly revolutionary; oh, if only we knew. As of right now, we need to consider this tentative news, but it seems pretty clear that iOS users will at least be seeing Final Fantasy V sooner rather than later.

Source: Operation Rainfall

We can't even call this an FF anniversary post, seeing as this trailer was released early by accident. Luckily, it can still be found in a fan-uploaded version on the link posted below, among others.

The trailer opens up with Lightning in her new get-up, news of which we posted just two days ago, and with a brief monologue concerning the 'holy city,' which, as seems to be the case with all RPG holy cities, has spots of darkness.

Then, after "The Final Journey of Lightning" flashes on the screen a couple times, the trailer gets happy again! There's a fair bit of gameplay footage, showing a battle menu that has once again been tweaked but maintains much of the elements of its two predecessors. The audio is a slight remix of the battle theme from the original FFXIII. Wait, am I- getting nostalgic?

At the very end, we hear this game's application of the number 13: it is the number of days remaining to the world. Clocks are displayed formidably throughout the trailer as well. Both aspects are in keeping with the emphasis on time, as we first reported back in September.

Source: Siliconera

Since Josh overheated from all that newsposting this morning (he's an old man now, he tires easily!), I'm here to pick up with the barrage of news!

First up on the docket is the sad news: Square Enix is laying off a few employees from their office in LA. This shouldn't surprise anyone, given the financial reports we've heard, but the company insists that the layoffs will not impact the release of any games currently in development.

We've all probably been wondering: what's up with all these mobile releases all of a sudden? I certainly am, having had to write up a dozen of them in the past month. The answer? Profitability, unsurprisingly. I'll let Yoichi Wada speak for himself: "In HD games, we usually have a mixture of profitable and unprofitable titles, generating profit as a whole. As for our Social Gaming & Others [division], we only have very few titles that are unprofitable." Accordingly, Wada remarked that the company would increase its presence in the mobile/social gaming market. He was quick to reassure, however, that this would in no way compromise the company's interests in console gaming.

Next is a fun 'favorite character' quiz from the official SE Japanese fan forum. Everyone loves quizzes, yeah? In a surprise finish, Zack Fair (FFVII) came out on top, followed by Cloud Strife (FFVII). While this shouldn't surprise anyone, top ten finishers represented a fair number of games: Zidane from FFIX, Tidus from FFX, Squall from FFVIII, Bartz from FFV (what?), and Kain from FFIV rounded out the top seven. A character from the most recent FF title (FFXIII-2), Noel, came in at 11th, with Noctis, from the yet-unreleased FF Versus XIII, coming in at 19th.

Speaking of Versus XIII, we may soon find ourselves calling the title by a new name. The hint comes from the game's Japanese Amazon page, where it is now listed as "tentative name." We've seen FFXIII Agito take on a new name, and given that the FFXIII project seems to be wrapping up with the third installment in Lightning's story, this potential rebranding seems like a good idea. Will Versus XIII become the next main installment in the FF series? Who knows!

Finally, Japan's Jump magazine has provided us with the first images of Lightning's new getup for Lightning Returns: FFXIII. That's about all, but I'll be darned if she doesn't look more attractive with each title. Due for release sometime in 2013.

Check out Josh's newspost commemorating the anniversary, well-articulate as ever, from earlier today; to all facebook and twitter followers, be sure to check out the CoN homepage for the several other anniversary-related newsposts from the past few days!

Source: Joystiq, Just Use a Phoenix Down, Siliconera, Gamechup, SGCafe

This is a day that truly sneaked up on me, even though in the back of my mind I knew it was coming and have for months. It might be a sign of the times, or at least a sign of my times, but I couldn't let it go unmarked here or anywhere else that I frequent: on this day, twenty-five years ago, Final Fantasy (back then, it didn't even need a Roman numeral) was released in Japan. Well, technically, that day likely came about yesterday for you if you're reading this, due to time zones and such. But still! 18th December!

I personally played that game almost from the day it was released Stateside. I'd seen all sorts of hubbub for the game in the months leading up to its American release in 1990, mostly from Nintendo Power magazine - of course, back then, that magazine and its ilk were the only ways to find out about such things. It had already captured my imagination, causing me to create my own ideas of what the weapons might look like, and even writing proto-fanfiction, and by the time I was able to get my hands on it the hype it had created in my own ten-year-old mind was massive.

And the game lived up to it.

It felt different from the only other JRPG I'd seen before it, Dragon Warrior (Quest). The party system, the more animated battles, and the sheer accessibility of the game relative to Dragon Warrior felt like a sea change in gaming, and it was one I was crazy for. While I didn't actually complete Final Fantasy for a great many years after first playing it, it triggered a fandom in me that led to me playing and/or owning every American-released game in the series within days of its release all the way through Final Fantasy IX.

That's a good part of my story with regards to the original Final Fantasy, now turning twenty-five. From a wider angle, though, there's more to it. This game not only essentially introduced an entire gaming company to the West, it also saved that same company, should you believe Hironobu Sakaguchi. That company went on to produce dozens and dozens of games, games that made a splash on generation after generation of gaming consoles and the gamers who owned them, and that was before they merged with another JRPG titan, Enix.

This game was and is huge. It didn't sell the most, and none of the many incarnations of the first game will ever win any beauty awards. It did, however, pave the way for just about every JRPG that came after it, and created a killer app for a lot of hardware manufacturers; how many people must have bought a SNES for Final Fantasy VI, VI or Chrono Trigger? How many people bought a PlayStation when they saw the gorgeous TV advertisements for Final Fantasy VII or in one of the dozens of entertainment magazines carrying them?

This game created Final Fantasy. This game jumpstarted the JRPG in the West. This game did a lot of things right and still moves units, all the way up to the PSP and iOS releases. But most importantly to me, it made it possible for all of us to be here right now, though we didn't cover it here until 2004. What legacy could be better than that?

Join us in celebrating Final Fantasy today. Share this news or your own thoughts both here and to your social networks (if you're on Twitter, use our hashtag, #FinalFantasy25, on Facebook, tag us!). It's okay to be excited about this. A good chunk of your lineage as a gamer came from this day twenty-five years ago, even if you weren't here to see it.

As part of the celebration for the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary, Square Enix brought in a wide array of artists to create an album celebrating the music of the series up to now. This is not exactly new news, though I believe we missed it in tidbits around the time that it was announced in October. The album was released last week, though, and to promote it a bit more, Square Enix Music posted this medley video to YouTube earlier this week, with samples of a large number of the tracks.

There's a lot of variety on show in this video, and it really makes for some fresh takes on some of the Final Fantasy music that we've heard for many, many years. It's piqued my interest, so I took some time to try to find some English-language shops that sell the double disc; while AmaCoN looked a bit pricey, I found that another of our shop affiliates, Play Asia, has the set for $35.00 including free shipping. If the video makes you want this for Christmas or... New Year's (?), hit that link right away.

Source: Square Enix YouTube, Destructoid