SquareEnix Confirm Final Fantasy XII, Sales Figures

Thanks to the Gaming-Age messageboard conglomerate for pointing out a new investor relations press conference (Japanese text only) held today in Japan by SquareEnix. They announced that Final Fantasy XII is intended to ship within the fiscal year in Japan - still no screenshots or details, though. Kingdom Hearts 2 is still having its license negotiated, so won't be out soon. But 9 titles should ship in the US from SquareEnix this fiscal year, including Final Fantasy X-2, which has already sold almost 2 million copies in Japan, and a mystery, solitary Playstation 1 title (another Final Fantasy remake?) The company also gave sales figures for their online title, Final Fantasy XI, which has sold 340,000 copies, and currently has 250,000 subscribers, even ahead of its Western release.

Comments

250k?

[th3space]

If that number holds up, then maybe there really is a future for MMORPGs on consoles...I just wonder if they'll get comparable stats in the States.

Final fantasy site

[Anonymous Coward]

"Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) is the first ever Online RPG of its FF series. The network world is called Vana'diel, which the player itself will be the "character" of the game, to solve the myths and to beat the monster with unity of your party members, you are able to play the game freely with your own style."

That sounds fucking awesome, solving myths and beat the monster with unity of party members. Maybe we'll get to pilot a 'Zig' too.

"By mastering various "Jobs" you will be able to have the "Job Ability" of that specific job."

Hello Everquest? Are you paying attention?

"What's special about Online RPG is the feature of "Communication" with other players."

I am sold. I thought myth solving and unity was enough, but here we also get something called "Communication". How mysterious and intriguing.

Note to self: Get someone who speaks Japanese if I ever plan on marketing anything in Japan.

Why the oldies?

[suineg]

I have seen enough remakes of the first few FF games to last a lifetime. Honestly how hard would it be to fix up FF7. Just redo the movies and put it on one DVD and then add some bonus content.

Re:Why the oldies?

[tolarianacademy]

Why change FF7? FF7 was perfect the way it was. It was a very creative approach to a relatively slow console for 3d rendering (the drawbacks of speed bonusses most psx 3d rendering engines take are glitchy zorders and texture mapping problems.) by only texturing large polygons (usually part of the scenery,) to me, gave the game a very unique feel. To change that feel by texturing them or improving other graphical aspects of the game would be a crime to me.

(You may also take notice that FF7 for Windows did not have any such graphical improvements even though they would have been extremely simple to add.)

Re:Why the oldies?

[Mprx]

FF7 is very annoying to play now because of the lack of analog controller support. The D-pad hurts your thumb if you use it too long.

Re:Why the oldies?

[Daetrin]

The D-pad hurts your thumb if you use it too long.

You wuss!

Back in my day we had to bang big rocks together in order to tell the characters what to do, and we liked it! And in the snow even!

Re:Why the oldies?

[PainKilleR-CE]

hell, I don't even use anything but the D-pad unless a game forces me to do otherwise. I played FF1 on that damned rectangle with a D-pad and 2 red buttons (+2 black buttons), wtf would I need something different to play FFXXIV?

Re:Why the oldies?

[PainKilleR-CE]

I think the reason for the oldies remakes is fairly obvious, but I'll state it anyway:
to make all of the games in the series available to the US audience (in English, broken as it may be at times), on one platform. I happen to like the fact that I can hope to play almost every FF game on my PS2 (and most of them on a PSOne (guess I'll have to start using that name or PS1 now that they announced a PSX, maybe the game stores will start changing their signs, too)). Especially as a fan that was never big on imports or the SNES in general, I never got to play any of the games besides FFI before VII anyway. I'm having a blast with FFII and really want III to come along so I can fill that hole in the line of PS1 CDs on my shelf.

Final Fantasy III? I Doubt It

[Guppy06]

"which has already sold almost 2 million copies in Japan, and a mystery, solitary Playstation 1 title (another Final Fantasy remake?) "

I don't see that happening. While Japan will buy anything so long as it has "Final Fantasy" written on it (think of the people you know that have to have every version ever released of the original Star Wars trilogy), selling a remake of an old game that makes it essentially just an SNES game playable on the PSX won't fly here in North America. There are only two ways I can think of that Square would sell FFIII in the US for the PSX.

1. Package it with something else (like they did with FFIV). The problem here is finding what game or games to bundle it with. With Chrono Trigger out of the way, there are no more big Square titles to bundle it with. The Romancing SaGa trilogy may be an idea, but may not work considering the lukewarm reception SaGa Frontiers gets in North America. Seiken Densetsu 3 has a similar problem. Now that they're "Square-Enix," there is also the option of including Dragon Warrior games (5 and 6 come to mind), but I don't think the world is ready yet for Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy in the same jewel case.
2. A complete overhaul. If Final Fantasy III is going to stand on its own two feet in the US, it will have to be quite a bit better than somewhat flashier graphics and sound. They'd have to give it the treatment that Enix gave Dragon Quest IV, turning it into a 3D game, or at the very least give it the same treatment they're currently giving Seiken Densetsu. However, how many people would they have available to devote to such a project? And wouldn't that slight the other games that didn't get the same treatment?

It might be easier to port it to the Game Boy Advance (still the home of 2-D gaming), but considering that every other Final Fantasy game from I to IX is playabe on the PSX, I don't see them releasing III for any other system, for the sake of consistency if nothing else.

Re:Final Fantasy III? I Doubt It

[suineg]

I am assuming the reasoning behind FF3 is the fact that every single other game has been ported to PSX. It is the last logical choice for them maybe.

Re:Final Fantasy III? I Doubt It

[simoniker]

You say that:

"selling a remake of an old game that makes it essentially just an SNES game playable on the PSX won't fly here in North America."

..but wasn't that the type of thing done (to NES games) for the Final Fantasy Origins Playstation release? However, I do agree that it might be weird to release Final Fantasy III on its own, and that _some_ enhancement is very likely. Time for blatant speculation about other titles to go with FF3!

We may find out that the mystery title is Chocobo Stallion after all this, of course :)

Cut scenes

[huh_]

Lets hope FFXII gets away from the whole play for 2 minutes, watch a 15 minute cut scene, play for 2 more minutes.. etc.

Re:Cut scenes

[Anonymous Coward]

like xenosaga and just about every other ps2 game out there? ;p

Re:Final Fantasy III? I Doubt It

[Daetrin]

Why does Seiken Densetu 3 have a similar problem? I thought Secret of Mana and Legends of Mana got a much better reception in the US then the SaGa series. For that matter, they could always rerelease Secret of Mana along with FF3, although i'd prefer to see Seiken Densetsu 3 of course, it's a wonderful game.

Dragon Quest VIII

[twootwoot]

If you guys are wondering about Square Enix's other big software title, Dragon Quest VIII, this IGN article explains their commitment to the series in North America and now Europe. They are planning to market the Dragon Quest/Warrior series towards Dragon Ball Z and Akira Toriyama fans.

Well, sorta...

[Anonymous Coward]

The PSOne version of Final Fantasy I+II were actually simple ports of the previously-updated WonderSwan Color versions of the game. Basically, Square had already gone through the effort of updating the graphics and gameplay when they ported the two games to the WSC, so porting that to the PSOne was pretty much no effort for them. I think redoing the music and the English translation were the big efforts. The PSOne ports were done as a chance to get some easy money since the games were pretty much done already.

However, Final Fantasy III has not yet been updated for the WSC, or any other system for that matter. There were rumors that Square was working on it, but they were about as promising as this rumor is ("Logically, it will happen"). If Square was going to port FFIII to the PSOne, they'd need to put forth a lot more effort to make it look and play like the Origins versions did. Which I doubt would be worth it for them since it'll be a budget release on a "dead" platform.

Basically, Square probably doesn't have an easy-to-port version of the game lying around to make it as worthwhile as it was for the previous games.

How They Do it!?!

[dbretton]

I think it would be very interesting how Square manages to pump out these Final Fantasy games so quickly.

Perhaps we should add a new law: Moore's Final Law: Computing power doubles every 18 months, which is about the same time Square releases a Final Fantasy sequel.

Re:How They Do it!?!

[silentbobdp]

They have two teams of ~100 people each, working in tandem. In other words, right now they have the one team finishing up XII, and XIII is already begun.

Of course, the teams might be a little thinner due to upkeep on XI.

Re:Final Fantasy III? I Doubt It

[Guppy06]

"..but wasn't that the type of thing done (to NES games) for the Final Fantasy Origins Playstation release?"

Paying $30.00 for both games is one thing. Paying $30.00 for each is something completely different (and wasn't that the MSRP for the WonderSwan Color carts? The ones without FMV or CD sound?). It's why IV, V, VI and Chrono Trigger were released as two bundles in North America instead of four individual games, as they did in Japan.

Re:Final Fantasy III? I Doubt It

[Guppy06]

"Why does Seiken Densetu 3 have a similar problem? I thought Secret of Mana and Legends of Mana got a much better reception in the US then the SaGa series."

Yeah, but it's a long way between "as popular as SaGa Frontiers" and "as popular as Chrono Trigger." Or even between the original SaGa trilogy and Chrono Trigger, before SaGa Frontiers left North American gamers with a bad tastes in their mouthes.

Also, with Seiken Densetsu 1 being overhauled and re-released for the GBA, I'd expect to see 2 and 3 pop up on the GBA as well instead of the PSX.

Re:Final Fantasy III? I Doubt It

[th3space]

by jiminey, it had better be some kind of chocobo game...those little blighters have been deserving of a full-fledged release all to themselves since day one!! ;)