Final Fantasy XIII Japanese release date all but confirmed

As the official release date for the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete box is closing in (that's tomorrow, Thursday, 16th of April), some fans have already gotten their hands on it, including the Final Fantasy 13 demo that the initial release of the box also holds. 1UP news reports that the demo ends in a screen that says "Coming Winter 2009". So there you go, the Japanese release date for FF13. But wait, I hear someone complaining that Winter 2009 isn't exactly a date now is it? Lets work on that a bit then.

According to 1UP, the second half of December, more specifically the two last Thursdays of the year, have been kind to Square Enix in the past, and those crazy Japanese guys are just all about tradition and things like that, right? So, 1UP's quick glance at the calendar seems to confirm that the release date is either 24th or 31st of December. Now, I personally think that those two dates are pretty crazy to release a game on, so I'm going one week back in time and say it's going to be 17th of December. How's that for speculation?

In addition to this little news bit, some demo gameplay has also already surfaced. User esegk at Justin.tv had a live stream of the demo's first moments, and now some recorded clips of that stream have popped up in YouTube. User Daxter241 apparently has 40 minutes of it, though only part 1 and part 2 are available as I'm writing this, totaling in about 12 minutes. I think we can assume that more will come as soon as he can split the 40 minute stream to YouTube sized chunks. It's only a matter of time until the more professional media has their video capturing monkeys do some better looking videos of the demo, but in the meantime these will have to do.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on April 15th 2009 at 9:35am