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More Final Fantasy Bits
tenchiken writes: "First the bad news, Square has announced that they are selling off Square Studios. This is the group that was responsible for the FF Movie and also a forthcoming short for The Matrix.
Better News. Final Fantasy X, the first FF for the new PS2, is shipping tommorow (in stores Wed). You can find reviews at GameSpot,Gamers, IGN, etc. The reviews are all positive, and I will be waiting in line on Wed morning to pick up my copy.
Square's new online game for the PS2 FF11 is also coming along nicely. Playonline Has a 'webcam' up feeding 24x7 images. The pictures look great. The above pages are Japanese."
CowboyNeal and I both have our copies of FFX on reserve and are planning on some time
off to watch LotR and play FFX this week.
There are less summons then before, but they follow the FFIX summoning scheme where by you get a long sequence the first time you use a summon, and then mostly abrieviated summons.
HOWEVER...
Sommons are now regular battle characters in this game. Summon Ifrit and he sticks around for a while. Some summons (2 of them I think) are multi character summons, and they also stick around. From what I have heard, the main use for summons is "to take one for the team" in FFX (ie, mega powerfull villian, you throw a summon up there to block, and then your characters rotate in).
Free version is up today.
Just go to http://ps2.ign.com and click on the link on the front page.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
THE SPIRITS WITHIN
h tm
As of 8/9/01
Gross-to-Date: $31,711,932
Production Budget: $115 million
Source:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/data/finalfantasy.
Why video game companies are willing to risk large sums on a traditionally low yield business (movie making) when their own video game market is already larger than the revenue stream for movies.
This bogus statistic was widely circulated, and subsequently very quitely debunked. What was actually true was that *worldwide* video game grosses were larger than *U.S.* movie ticket sales, which is much less surprising and much less signifigant.
What's more, when combined with some other numbers, the video game biz looks like a better candidate for the "low yield" club than the movie business. From Wired News:
The [computer and video game] industry created more than 219,000 jobs and paid $7.2 billion in wages in 2000, according to the study. Retail sales of computer and video game hardware and software totaled about $7.8 billion.
So, according to this article, the combined pc/video game business watched very nearly it's entire revenue stream go right back out the door in salaries alone, last year, at least. No wonder PC games are under seige and the more profitable console games are front and center.
The movie business has had some famous flops, but in general, there are more opportunities in the movie business to use sheer marketing firepower to ensure that a crummy product still makes big money.
I'm not saying that I think video game companies can make good movies - heck, 90% of the time, they can't even make good video games - but I can understand the desire to move into a market that has more predictable revenues and great tie-in opportunities.