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Final Fantasy XIII Still PS3 Only
Square Enix recently announced some of the games to be showcased at their "private party" in August. Looking at the games listed we see that Final Fantasy XIII seems to still be PS3 only and the rumors that Final Fantasy Agito XIII was canned seem to be highly overrated.
Final Fantasy has always been focused on one platform. They push the hell out of every polygon budget, every memory limit, that they can get out of the hardware. Even if the core libraries are easily portable, I can imagine they don't relish the thought of porting or dual-targeting the title, because the game will not look as good on one of the platforms. For a title that is all about visuals, that's hard to take.
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The Final Fantasy series is a console mover.
FFI came out for the NES in 1990. I loved it so much I had to beg my parents to buy me a SNES for FFII/IV.
Then FFVII came out for the Playstation. Fortunately, it did so well that they ported it to the PC. Then FFVIII tanked on the PC and FFIX released only on the playstation, so I went out and bought one, allowing me to scoop up Anthology, Chronicles, and Origins in the crossfire.
Then FFX came out for the PS2. I loved FFVII and FFIX so much I had to buy myself a PS2 to play FFX.
Then the original FFII and FFIII came out on the WonderSwan Color. In Japan only.
Then the original FFIII came out for the Nintendo DS. Guess who went out and bought one.
Unfortunately for Square-Enix, I did not love FFXII so much that I will be buying a PS3 to play FFXIII. The spell is finally broken. Or I'm getting older.
Life would be easier if I had the source code.
As if millions of voices suddenly cried out "DUH!" and then were silenced.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
When the PS3 was absolutely tanking and the Xbox 360 was dominant, Square Enix announced that they were considering porting FFXIII to the Xbox 360.
Later, Square Enix announced that they've licensed the Unreal 3 engine.
So there was a lot of speculation that they were planning on bringing FFXIII out on the Xbox 360.
Since then, the PS3 has moved from absolutely pathetic to just plain luke-warm, and the Xbox 360 has completely failed in Japan. So it makes less sense now then it did some two freaking years ago when they first started leaking screenshots.
Given Square's obsession lately with cutscenes. They seem to love having lots of prerendered cutscenes in the game, rather than using the game engine. Well, that is the one area that a Blu-Ray drive will be advantageous in gaming. While you don't really need the space for game assets, you certainly could if you want to have an hours of HD cutscenes.
Personally, I'm not a real fan of the whole cutscene thing. I'd rather you use the engine all the time, more immersive to me, and game graphics these days are good enough that it isn't as though you need a cutscene just to express detail the engine can't.
Sadly, I don't think that even Final Fantasy could make the Japanese want to buy an XBox. It would just alienate the fans. Considering the popularity of the systems, and the fact that FF doesn't require amazing graphics, I'm surprised they don't put it out on the Wii.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Outside of quality control issues for the console itself (the RROD) i dont really understand how you could call it the xbotch 360. The controller the 360 comes with is arguably one of the best controllers ever made and there is a very large amount of quality games on the console.
The storage space was more about full motion video than it was/is about good graphics. You can't put FMV and CD Quality sound on a cartridge. This time around Nintendo put DVD on the Wii, and it has just as much storage as the XBox. The PS3 has blu-ray, which adds a ton of storage, but I've never seen FF shy away from using multiple discs. The N64 had more than enough power to display all the graphics that FF and any other RPG of it's time had. It was actually better at actual graphics than the PS1. The PS1 just had a lot more storage space. For a quick comparison. Zelda: Ocarina of Time was under 30 MB. FF VII, I believed, filled up 4 CDs.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
A lot of the later PS3 games require installation. I believe Grand Theft Auto needs ~4GB of hard drive space (it's printed on the back of the game). And from my PS3 experience (I own one), installing games can be one way to do it. Download a game from PSN, and it comes in a "capsule" that you click and install (why?!?! It's not like you can copy it off to a memory card...). Then after waiting for it to be installed, you click the new version and the game launches.
Not sure if the PS3 discs do that (probably just start up and ask to install).
About the only real thing one notices about the PS3 is that doing almost anything involves reading an EULA before you can do anything. (Besides the initial set up - installing games often pops up another EULA, as do software updates). So the "installation experience" is already here...