Record Number of Titles At TGS

Gamespot is reporting that this year's Tokyo Game Show will feature a record number of titles on display, some 573 games. The huge numbers reflects the console launch cycle, but surprisingly a full half of the games on offer are either PC or mobile games. The official TGS site has the full list of games, with Square Enix having some particularly interesting titles on offer. Sony has released the list of playable PS3 and PSP games that will be at the event, with heavy hitters like Heavenly Sword, Lair, Resistance, and Warhawk rounding out the list nicely. Game|Life has some commentary on the games selection for the curious. "Also on Sakaguchi's plate are two Xbox 360 RPGs to be published by Microsoft. Blue Dragon was reconfirmed to be shipping this year, and Lost Odyssey will be at Tokyo Game Show but ship in 2007. Microsoft's dreams of publishing the next big Japanese RPG don't stop there, however. The company's partnership with Star Ocean creators Tri-Ace will come to fruition next year with an RPG called Infinite Undiscovery."

Comments

Saw the new square games

[rsilvergun]

at RPGamer.com yesterday. Sequals and spinoffs, spinoffs and Sequals. It be one thing if the games didn't tend to be pretty lame (FFX-2 was a travesty). Oh well, as long as Tri-Ace keeps making good games and Enix keeps the DQ series interesting, I'm happy. But it's sad to see Square, who used to make great gameplay-driven RPGs tossing out so much junk lately.

Re:Saw the new square games

[Kirin Fenrir]

Yes, FFXII, one of only six titles in history to receive a perfect score from Famitsu, is clearly "junk".

Re:Saw the new square games

[oc255]

Yeah FFX-2 was pretty bad imo. Dresspheres, your character's (all girls) abilities depend on what outfit you wear. I got through it, didn't do any side quests. FFXI was a horrible exercise in grinding, my first exposure to an MMO, and I quit for the more life-wife-friendly game of WoW. Crystal Cronicles(GC) was horrific. So you're right so far.

However, I can't comment on FFXII. I played the demo, was impressed in a great way, but I've avoided any more contact, previews for spoiling reasons. My hope is that they pull a PS3: release great product in a time of criticism and quiet the crowd.

Re:Saw the new square games

[twistedsymphony]

I don't know there seems to be quite a few FRESH titles around. The Xbox 360 (who's older Xbox 1 had NO JRPGs to speak of) has some good titles already. What I've played of Enchanted Arms is fantastic and fresh so far, it's not really groundbreaking in anyway but AFAIK it's not a sequel or spin off of anything, just a fresh and solid turn-based Japaneses-style RPG. Ninety-Nine Nights, while not exactly an RPG has many many RPG elements too it, I've heard it described as an "RPG Lite" which I think fits the bill exactly, again another fresh idea. Blue Dragon looks awesome too, not a spin-off or sequel, and IIRC it's made by the same guy responsible for Crono-trigger. And that's just the JRPG stuff... of course there are Western Style RPGS like Oblivion and the upcoming Mass Effect too.

Re:Saw the new square games

[Masami Eiri]

The X-2 bashing gets old. You couldn't go into it expecting a serious game. If you didn't, and you reveled in the cheese, it was great. Didn't hurt that the battle system was actually somewhat novel for an FF game. Truth told, it is up there as one of my favorite FF games.

Re:Saw the new square games

[Saffaya]

"Square, who used to make great gameplay-driven RPGs "

What's wrong with FMV-filled and extremely repetitive combat sequences RPGs ?
They've been doing the exact same thing since they came to the PlayStation with FF 6.
Time to wake up, isn't it ?
Why cry about it now ?

Go play FF 5/chrono trigger or any Falcom (Ys, eiyuu densetsu series, etc ..) or Far east of eden, if you want japanese RPG with more substance.

Re:Saw the new square games

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they released a playable version of FFXI for the PC yet?

Fuck the gameplay, their PC client sucked ass. Full screen only, no windowed mode, and the fucker crashed whenever any other application opened a window.

I'm still waiting for Square Enix to announce a PC port of anything that isn't a half-assed rush job. If they're going to bother to release PC ports, they might as well try and make them playable on the PC.

Again, screw gameplay, I just want them to make a PC port that's designed for the PC and isn't a crappy PlayStation emulation.

Of course, on the gameplay front, have they announced whether or not the US version of FFXII will require player interaction? Anyone who played the demo knows not to bother with the game that apparently is almost pure cutscene, with the small playable bits reduced to playing "follow the arrow on the minimap".

I'm really afraid that Square is going to drag Enix with them into the mud, DQ8 was great but everything from the Square side has just sucked ass. There's a reason why Enix could buy out Square, and it's because Square started sucking when they stopped making games and started making CGI movies (namely, FF7).

Re:Saw the new square games

[Anonymous Coward]

Famitsu, that was the magazine that rated practically all the Final Fantasy games as the top 10 greatest games of all time, right? They're hardly unbiased.

People keep on forgetting this, but Square released a demo of FFXII that a lot of people have played. Generally, when someone says FFXII is junk, it's from personal experience and not based on rumors.

It's safe to say that FFXII is junk. We've played it. Even the small section shown in the demo (presumably one of the best sections of the game) was bad enough to let us know the game was junk.

Was it this many???

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it this many?

2^32,582,657-1'th post! Woo-hoo!

Gotta love Google!

[WFFS]

Here's the translated text of the announcement:

Exhibition schedule title booth contents 2nd feature announcement

2006/09/12

We announce the game software, and booth contents 107 it has the notification to September 1st. Unpublished amount is included and the number of present exhibition schedule titles (the peripheral device and the like it includes), they are 573 titles. Among those, the game of online correspondence becomes 133 titles. Both the quantity of advanced registration and the number of online corresponding games, the previous opening time when past it is highest (the quantity of advanced registration: 516, the number of online corresponding games: 80) It reaches the number of registers which are exceeded. The number of titles classified by genre and classified by platform is as follows.
* As for details annex PDF (exhibition schedule title summary booth contents summary) please refer to.

<Exhibition schedule title several summaries>

Genre The number of titles

Action 129
Roll playing 76
Simulation 49
Puzzle 35
Adventure 33
Sport 28
Shooting 23
Racing 16
In addition 184

Platform The number of titles

Personal computer 127
Portable telephone 125
Play station 2 100
[nintendo] DS 52
[pureisuteshiyon] Playstation portable 33
Xbox 360 20
Play station 3 18
Wii 5
Game boy advance 2
Xbox 1
[nintendogemukiyubu] Nintendo Gamecube 1
Play station 1
In addition 88

About the test playing of game title of part

From latest "Tokyo game Shaw 2006", attendant upon the use of the CESA ethical stipulated CERO ethical stipulated new rating system, "the Z division" work or to test playing of the work which includes the expression which is suitable "Z division" makes only 18 years old or more. When test playing of the game title which has age restriction it is desired, the document which can do age verification () presentation such as driver's permit passport student's card becomes necessary. As for 18 years old or more carrying, the fish you ask the above-mentioned document.
* It does age verification with each booth.

TGS maybe the real successor to E3?

[bomanbot]

With the record number of games (and the apparently continuing interest of publishers), maybe the Tokyo Game Show will be the real successor to the E3?

I mean, I would guess that a booth at an expo in Tokyo would not be that much cheaper than an LA based one, but who knows? Maybe it could even help to keep the "amateur gaming bloggers" in check, because travelling to Tokyo is quite expensive, yknow?

And it would be possible to show nearly completed games to build up pre-christmas buying hype instead of wasting precious development time on a demo for a game that wont be seeing the shelves for several months...

Re:TGS maybe the real successor to E3?

[KDR_11k]

Not really. Seen that number of PC games? 99% of them involve sexual acts with underage comic characters and less gameplay than Final Fantasy.

No gran turismo for PSP?

[iamhassi]

I notice Gran Turismo isn't in the list of PSP games, will it ever come out? I bought the PSP for gran turismo which was suppose to be released when the PSP came out.

it's now been a year and a half and no gran turismo, yet you can pre-order the game online. Walmart has been taking pre-orders for psp gran turismo since last march, now it says it'll be released February 2007.

That's security, not stupidity

[Myria]

FF11's lack of a windowed mode and crashing when another program takes over is a security feature. It's harder to use hack programs when you can't see their UI. Square bans people for using hacks that let you play the game in windowed mode.

Melissa

Re:That's security, not stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio 2003 comes with something called a "network debugger". It allows the debugger GUI to be run on another computer while debugging programs local to the machine. It's trivially easy to run programs in the background without having access to the display. That answer is 100% bullshit.

As an example, look at every other game ever created for Windows XP. None of them have problems with cheaters and windowed mode.

For a specific example, see World of Warcraft. They've had no problems banning cheaters and their game has a windowed mode and works fine when other programs open windows.

Besides, Square-Enix keeps on having to ban FFXI accounts due to people cheating with third party tools. Apparently crashing when other programs open windows isn't stopping cheaters, although it does stop normal people from playing when they receive new mail.

The only reason the game is designed like that is because Square Enix has no clue how to write Windows programs. So they treat the system like it's a console instead of a multitasking environment.

I'm going

[Taulin]

Already have my tickets bought. Even staying at a hotel in Akihabara.