News

As a teaser of sorts, Square Enix has added three songs from FFXII to the game's official website.

The songs are the work of FFXII main composer Hitoshi Sakimoto. This will be the first Final Fantasy in which Nobuo Uematsu does not hold that title. As of right now, the titles of the first and third songs are unknown. Song two, however, is believed to be "Ashe's Theme."

The tracks are streamed from the website and cannot be directly downloaded without a hassle. However, one can download them in MP3 form from ffxiionline.com's Music page.

Source: Gamesarefun.com

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I've only listened to the first two tracks, but I've liked what I've heard thus far. It's a shame that Nobuo Uematsu isn't the main composer for the game, but I'm sure he probably wanted a break after working on all those other Final Fantasy games. Hitoshi Sakimoto was a good choice, in my opinion, to replace him though.

As the title states, Square Enix has released new screenshots of the latest installment of the company's flagship franchise. The unique character art features the work of designer Akira Toriyama. The screenshot feature some new characters, but it is unclear as of yet how many of these will be playable.

In other Dragon Quest VIII news, there is still no word on a North American release date. Japanese gamers are not much better off, however, with a vague release date of Winter 2005.

Source: Games Are Fun

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Say whatever negative things one wants about Akira Toriyama's Dragonball and Dragonball Z anime series (and I'll most likely agree), but I have loved his video game character design work (for those who did not know, he was the man responsible for Chrono Trigger's art). Hopefully, the localization for the title will not take Square Enix nearly has long as it has taken them for Star Ocean 3.

It was two years ago today that Final Fantasy XI launched in Japan. Playonline has taken the opportunity to compile a massively detailed census of the activity occuring on the game's servers.

To begin, the number of FFXI active customers has broken the 500,000 mark. The 500,000+ figure does not include those accounts using their free trial. It is just paying customers. These 500k customers have accounted for over 1,200,000 registered characters, or an average of about 2.5 characters per customer. Exploring this deeper, it can be seen that Japanese customers average 3-4 characters while their North American counterparts only average 1-2.

34% of these characters are at level 1. The vast majority of these level 1 characters are used for item storage, synthesis, or gardening. (Note: Maybe some of the CoN's FFXI players could explain this in further detail). 60% of the game's characters are level 20 or lower (this is not including the level 1 characters discussed earlier even) . Over 51% of the characters have the warrior job class chosen as their main job. The warrior class is also one of the most popular support jobs as well.

One final note of interest that the census displays is that there is never really a downtime for the game. There is always a numerous amount of players to venture out with no matter what time one wants to play. This is because North America and Japan playing levels peak at different times, the former peaking at noontime of the latter.

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What I found most interesting about the census is the vast amount of people playing the game. I'm sure I'd find the other data more engaging if I actually played the game. I recommend checking out the link posted at the beginning of this update to those who found this interesting. The playonline site features much more in depth data than I went into here.

Recently, there was a concert of Final Fantasy music performed in LA, for the E3 convention. According to the article by Gamespot.com , it was a smashing success, and even had a surprise perfomance of One Winged Angel, from FFVII

Among the compositions played, there was:

* Terra's Theme (Final Fantasy VI)
* Theme of Love (Final Fantasy IV)
* Dear Friends (Final Fantasy V)
* Aeris's Theme (Final Fantasy VII)
* Not Alone (Final Fantasy IX)
* New Melody From Final Fantasy VII Advent Children
* Final Fantasy (Theme)

Apparently, there were also many video cameras in the audience, so there is a chance that the taped version will be released to the public (or illegally to the internet) sometime in the future.

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I'm sure there are plenty of Final Fantasy fans that wish they could have been at this concert, it sounds like it was a wonderful evening. The article does say that there may be more concerts like this in the future, so keep your ear to the ground if you're interested!

In order to help maintain the high quality of Final Fantasy games, Square Enix has moved forward the release dates for the next installation of the series. Originally to come out in Japan this summer, it will be pushed back a few months.

The game should arrive on American shores sometime between this winter and next spring.

Full article: Gamespot.com

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I'm a little disappointed to hear this, but the delay isn't by that much. The game will still be coming in due time, and if they want time to get quality, that sounds like a fair deal.

On the heels of Elena99's recent news update concerning new FFXII screenshots, Square Enix has released another trailer for the title. This one is a bit longer than the previous one, lasting a lengthy 7-plus minutes.

The good folks at Games_Are_Fun are hosting the video. Pay their site a visit and check out the video.

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I didn't watch the entire video (short attention span++), but the parts that I did see looked great. There seemed to be FMV footage. I'm starting to look forward to the title. The video is quite grainy if the size is increased as the video only weighs in around 15 MBs.