No matter. The giant succeeded with its first intention, with president Yoichi Wada confirming that the game, four years in the making so far, would indeed see release in Japan before the end of the year. December 17, to be exact.
The price? An indomitable 9240 yen (£62/US$102). After PS3 game Gundam Senki, releasing earlier this month at 8379 yen, it seemed yet more confirmation that publishers are steadily raising game prices. Not that it was any surprise to the assembled crowd at the Miraikan science museum in Tokyo, of course. Japanese bloggers already knew about it because they’d noticed on the Square Enix website that changing the address of the page announcing the event from ‘before’ to ‘after’ would reveal all.
Wada went on to declare the US version would only experience a season delay on the Japanese launch, putting it somewhere in March 2010, while nothing was said about the European version, but it’s likely to come during summer of the same year.
These were the headlines from the event, but its subtexts were no less illuminating. SCEJ’s full executive staff was present, with Kaz Hirai also taking the stage to make clear the close relationship of Final Fantasy with PlayStation. He confirmed a PS3/XIII bundle will be available and that SCEJ will support Square Enix in pushing the title in the region. And in turn, Square Enix echoed his words with a professed renewal of support for PlayStation platforms in the future.
Of course, since the Xbox 360 version is not planned for Japan, the event could only be about PS3, anyway. Also absent from the discussion were PSP’s Agito and PS3’s Versus, the other two games in Square Enix’s suite based on XIII. Moreover, erstwhile Final Fantasy character designer (and director of Versus) Tetsuya Nomura was not even on stage, leaving it to its two leads, producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Motomu Toriyama to go on to announce a renewed relationship with Japanese beverage company Suntory with the fruit being 16 new potion drinks, one to represent each main character in the game.
