Final Fantasy XIII, Japan 2009, rest of the world April 2010 or later

As was expected and much speculated, even more so after the site launch some days ago, it has now been officially confirmed. FF13 is slated to come out in Japan sometime 2009, and the rest of the world has to wait until April 2010, or later.

That's what Square Enix president Yoichi Wada said in a financial call in Tokyo yesterday, and I guess that's what everyone have been posting about, and will be posting about for the next few days.

I find the "or later" part interesting, to say the least. Since they have said earlier that it will be a simultaneous west release on both consoles, and that they won't even start the XBOX360 conversion until the Japanese PS3 version is ready, it makes me wonder, have they even looked into porting the game yet, and can't estimate the date more accurately, thus the "later" part? Or are they just playing it safe and all doubters will get a surprise when it actually is ready by then?

On the other hand, I don't really buy the part about not starting to develop the X360 version until the PS3 version is ready. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Sure, they probably leave the actual porting to be done after the PS3 goes gold, but I'm sure that a lot of work has been done already to set up the ground for the port. It's also more than likely that the localization will be done by a separate team, and I expect that that work has also begun already.

So, on one hand, it seems like they sure are taking their time, but on the other hand, they probably are doing it the right way, making sure that it's solid when it ships. Though, at this point the quality of Square Enix's X360 work is an unknown. There isn't anything to base any guesses on. You could say that Last Remnant, but no, not really. Last Remnant was done with the Unreal3 Engine, which has been designed to be used on X360. FF13 is done with SE's own Crystal Tools, which, as I said, is an unknown factor right now. Though Crystal Tools also supports PC, so I'm still holding out hope for a PC port.

But all this remains to be seen.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on January 16th 2009 at 7:24am