Square Enix's Yearly Gift Now Arriving

I got this pretty lame, dull envelope in the mail today, and the sender was Square Enix. In the recipient field, it addresses itself to me, Mr. Square Enix Member, Bronze Level.

Square Enix's version of Club Nintendo, MEMBER, has started to ship out the rewards, and, being a MEMBER solely because I registered Final Fantasy XIII, I was entered into the Bronze category, and I got a paltry set of post-cards.

Yea. Post cards.

However, they're adorned with artwork from 3 different games: Final Fantasy XIII, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days and Star Ocean: The Last Hope. None of them seem to be screaming anything back at me, but the art is pretty decent.

I'm sure there's a fanboy somewhere who'd love to have these. Perhaps they're lurking on eBay, right now...

Check out more shots after the break.

[WORK NOTE] FFXIII Ships on 3 discs, Sony considering PSPgo relaunch?

It's been a while since I've done one of these, and there were two interesting stories that I caught while at work.

Final Fantasy XIII on 3 Discs According to GameFly, their listing for the game has been updated, reflecting a very interesting piece of info, giving renters-to-be a warning:

NOTE: This is a three disc game, but it only counts as one disc against your rental plan.

Yea, 3 discs. I'd believe it, simply because Square said a little while ago that 3 discs was their goal. Actually, considering the track records with "goals," there is reason for suspect here.

Original Source - GameFly Listing
My Source - Kotaku

Sony Considering Relaunching/Rebranding the PSPgo Now this is something I'd be looking forward to. According to unnamed sources to Gamervision, they site them by saying Sony is looking into efforts to relaunch - or even rebrand, and seeing as how that helps them with every iteration of their home console lines, I would not doubt this claim - the PSPgo with "a marketing blitz in hopes to rekindle some sort of excitement over the handheld...and there's little doubt a price drop might be among them." A price drop? Again, that would be something for me to consider, but until they live up to their word on the UMD-to-digital conversion program, then there won't be a PSPgo in my house for a long time.

Original Source - Gamervision
My Source - Joystiq


Back to that "UMD-to-digital" thing, my claim is that Sony needs to do with PSP and UMD what they're doing with Blu-ray: Digital Copy. It's a hit with DVD and Blu-ray, and it's something I love. Having Digital Copy for UMD games would be awesome. Then again, who's to say that you could rip an .iso file from TBP or Demonoid and dump it to a PSPgo running custom firmware and homebrew? It's what 360 modders do...

Japan's Favorite Final Fantasy Games

Kotaku ran an article about a Japanese website asking the first 100 people in line at TSUTAYA in Shibuya for FFXIII what their top three Final Fantasy games were. Results? A little shocked, actually:

13.) Final Fantasy II: 2 votes
12.) Final Fantasy XI: 3 votes
11.) Final Fantasy: 3 votes
10.) Final Fantasy X-2: 6 votes
9.) Final Fantasy III: 11 votes
8.) Final Fantasy XII: 16 votes
6.) Final Fantasy IV: 21 votes
6.) Final Fantasy IX: 21 votes
5.) Final Fantasy V: 22 votes
4.) Final Fantasy VIII: 26 votes
3.) Final Fantasy VI: 29 votes
2.) Final Fantasy VII: 57 votes
1.) Final Fantasy X: 59 votes

Red - NES : Grey - SNES : Orange - PSX : Blue - PS2

You see that? Final Fantasy X is number 1, with VII trailing by only 2 votes. The weird thing is that this is very close to my Top 3:

3) IX
2) VII
1) X

Tweet about FFXIII, Square will reveal a 360-exclusive FFXIII gift

Now, we know Microsoft has a bad reputation when it comes to their third-party partners and getting exclusive content for their white box (Rockstar with GTA IV seems to be the most recent and popular), but this seems as subtle as it can get without people pointing and screaming "buy-out."

Announced in the past day or so, Microsoft and Square are going to be announcing an exclusive item to be used in FFXIII, exclusive to XBL. The only catch? They won't do it unless they get some free advertisement from gamers.

The advertisement isn't all that bad, as you have to tweet about it. Yes, you are now being forced to use twitter to learn about an item you have no clue about or what it does. If Microsoft and Square get enough tweets about FFXIII, they'll announce it. Yes, you read that right. Until their tweet-meter/pool of twitter advertisement is full, they won't say jack shit.

As of 11.14 at 2:54 PM

As large as the Final Fantasy fan base is, I'd expect this do be done and over within hours of it starting, or in a single day at most. Nope. The only blame I can find - and lack of interest from the Final Fantasy fans, as a communal - can be placed squarely on Microsoft, or specifically the Xbox 360 itself. In an notebook dump on Kotaku, Stephen Totilo had sat down with "Square people" and they said their goal is 3-4 discs for the 360 version, whereas they can get everything on a single Blu-ray disc for the PS3, for obvious reasons. Microsoft charges developers if they need extra discs space for their games, and it's not a pretty charge, either. Seeing this, I guarantee Microsoft has waived the fee for Squeenix, which was a nice selling point to get them to develop for the 360. That, or the lack of shitty sales of the PS3 sales prior to the Slim.

When I originally read the article about this, I thought it was just an XBL exclusive item about Final Fantasy, not an item for FFXIII. This lead to my initial skepticism that Square would release FFVII on XBL, which would not surprise me, as sales of FFVII have been picking up on the PSS (PlayStation Store). Microsoft would love to dish out as much money as possible to get FFVII on XBLA just to prove a point to Sony. What that point is, I have no idea. It would be a hell of a download for the 360, coming in at 1.32 GB, according to FFVII's space on the PSS.

[Microsoft - FFXIII - Register. Tweet. Win]

[RUMOR] Final Fantasy XIII For Japan: December 17 [UPDATED]

Hidden within the depths of a flash site, there lurks the release date for Final Fantasy XIII. That date? Well, if you didn't catch the headline, it's December 17. According to Kotaku, there is a Twittering method to unlock this image:

The flash site's URL had "_Before_" in it, and typing "_After" seems to bring up this image, which clearly states that the game goes on sale December 17, 2009.

There has only been a previously know release window as "this winter." The only problem with this date? It's Japan only.

Square Enix will be holding a press conference later today to unveil the release date for Japan, so it's safe to say this is a cached image on the aforementioned site, waiting to be unveiled to the public.

My only problem? I'm still debating between 360 or PS3. I always buy multiplatform games on a 360 simply because of Achievements (Trophies seem like the red-headed step child of PS3 system functionality), but I'm debating on FFXIII because of the multiple disc issue, and I can foresee an issue with the 360 coding.

[UPDATE] It's set in stone. Japanese gamers will get their Final Fantasy fix on December 17. Everyone else has been given the window of "Spring 2010;" when I say "everyone else," the press release from their conference at 4-fucking-AM local time said they are aiming for an international release with the game. They poked at the fact they really don't like Europe when it comes to Final Fantasy releases, and said they are trying to get "everyone" (probably just North America and Europe; paraphrasing of course) to have FFXIII around the same time.

Japan will also be getting a PS3 Slim/FFXIII bundle. So far, just the system and game have been confirmed; no special art style to the system or goodies.

Let's just hope that we'll have XIII before Japan gets XIV. Which I have no intentions on buying, purely standing by the fact that I hate MMOs.
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