Final Fantasy XIII Site & Trailer Open
- Filed under: Games, News
- Date: Jul 15, 2008 23:41 JST
- Tags: Final Fantasy, PS3, RPG, Square Enix, Xbox 360
Hot on the heels of the news that Final Fantasy XIII will not be a PS3 exclusive, doubtless thanks to some great clinking sacks of Microsoft’s Windows revenue, is the newly opened Final Fantasy XIII official site. And on it is a very nice looking trailer, though little else.
It looks to be the usual FF science fantasy milieu, though with notably more guns evident than in previous titles. As long as it has giant flying ships and floating islands, all will be well I’m sure.
This is the fabled PS3 Blu-ray version.
Very amusingly, at the end of the trailer is the legend “For Playstation 3 Only in Japan”. Sad. Poor Sony.
The girl holding that fabled DVD is too hot for words.
It may still be PS3-only in Japan:
http://kotaku.com/5025115/is-final-fantasy-xiii-xbox-360-coming-to-japan-ask-them
There appear to be limits to even Microsoft’s cash reserves, or perhaps they consider Japan a lost cause?
Seriously, why do people allways jump straigth to the conclution that microsoft chucks a fridgefull of money whenever theres a story abou them getting some exclusive or other?
yeah, in the passed they have paied for some exclusives, they have bough game devlopment studios and all that, but so has sony and nintendo.
and anyways, didnt squenix basicly say at there press confrence that they deciede to do the 360 verion to maximise the target market in the US and europe? thats what i understood from it anyways.
You have a point when talking just about FF, but putting their actions in a wider context suggests they really are paving the way for these exclusives with cash incentives - otherwise why on earth would we be seeing Xbox exclusive Tales and Star Ocean games?
These are games which sell primarily in Japan, and there are few RPGs or RPG gamers on the Xbox in Japan. It makes no commercial sense for them to do that unless there is something in it for them, surely?
Ahh yeah, im not claiming that every exclusive gained by microsoft has nothing to do with money.
Its things like the GTA4 episodes, lots of people say microsoft paid for them to be exclusive, when in actual fact they paied an advanced fee, just like any other publisher would when commissioning content. Alot of RPGs have come out first on 360 this generation, and that is mail due to microsoft money, but think of it this way. games are really expensive to make and you have to get that money from somewhere. Microsoft need to increase there market share in japan, and paying game developers to make games that japan will want is one good way, they aer a publisher, its what publishers do!
another way for a company to make a game is to self fun it without publisher money, and even for large independent developers like squenix and id software (they just announced EA will publish Rage. They have the funds o completely develop a game, but publishing is outside of that. marketing and all the stuff publishes are good at is expensive. Because they took the entire risk and cost of development on by themselves, they get a better publishing contact. if they needed advanced money from EA to develop the game with, the would have got a worse return), theres only so much money to go round. I have no doubt the square can fun a few games buy itself, but extra dollars from an interested publish that just wants good market expanding games with little to no influence on day to day operation is a good match. Thats one thing microsoft are good at, they came to the game console party late, and they know that. its been a hard fight to get to where they are today, and i think one of there strengths is how they handle there game studios. Companies like rare and lionhead are completely autonomous, they can run themselves how the want, in the full knowledge that they have the financial backing of the biggest software company in the world. they can build there games and not worry about how they pay there staff(i don’t know what lionheads business statement is, but rare’s charter is to create games that expand the xboxs user base, hence games like viva pinyata).
I’m completely loosing the point and rambling here, but my basic point the games business aint what it was, and money however you get it (publisher advances or tryng to target as many people as possible) is absolutely necessary if our going to get anywhere.