April Fools Day: Square Enix Teases Final Fantasy XIII Alternative

Despite a successful release of Final Fantasy XIII worldwide on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Square Enix has announced that it will be remaking its latest HD epic into a more bite-sized title.

Tentatively titled Final Fantasy XIII Alternative, the game is being redone using the recent 16-bit engine used in the latest Chrono Trigger DS port to bring FFXIII to handheld systems later this year.

"Final Fantasy XIII is a hallmark of this generation," said the game's producer, Yoshinori Kitase, "but unfortunately, HD gaming has limited appeal."

Kitase explains that though the graphical prowess of the PS3 and 360 a nice for kids and single men, most people - especially in Japan, he says - are too busy to sit in front of a TV for over 60 hours to play a game like Final Fantasy XIII.

Porting the title to more portable devices seems like a smart business move in Japan where the games market is currently dominated by the DS and PSP, and even Square Enix's latest in the Dragon Quest franchise made its debut on DS.

"The DS is the obvious first step for Final Fantasy XIII," Kitase said, "but I think the 16-bit graphics engine we have chosen will work on PSP as well as various cellphones."

The game is still apparently very early in its development, but will likely be available early this fall, probably before Nintendo's new 3DS hits the market.

Its important to remember that the screens released here are still from a pre-alpha build, and will probably be cleaned up before launch.

Final Fantasy XIII was not everything I hoped for, but it was decent enough. I'm quite frankly not surprised to see this move from Square Enix, but that doesn't mean I'll be buying it again.

How about you?

UPDATE: Just kidding. ;)

I Hate April Fools Day

Ah, at last it's April 2nd. Good effing riddance to April Fools Day for another year.

You might have noticed that I didn't post much yesterday. This is because I have an incredibly hard time believing anything I see or hear on April Fools Day. Occassionally there will be a few jokes that are worth checking out (I particularly liked Alpine Legend and Gmail Autopilot), but for the most part, the internet just dissolves into a big pile of crap.

...I mean, more so than it already is. :P

That being said, there was an abnormally large volume of RPG news yesterday, most of which appears to be legit. However, due solely to the fact that the information was released on April Fools, I will be reporting most of it under the RUMOR label until confirmation appears on a day that isn't yesterday.

Just thought I'd give you the head's up.

APRIL FOOLS! Square Enix and Namco Bandai Merge, Announce New RPG

Japanese game publishing giants Square Enix and Namco Bandai announced today that they will be merging to form what the refer to as a “Japanese gaming superpower,” and will be referred to as Squareco Bandix (though the official name remains Square Namco Bandai Enix). The merger comes after both companies have scrambled furiously to acquire smaller publishers including Banpresto and D3 on the Namdai side, and Taito and Eidos on the Squenix side.

Yoichi Wada, former president of Square Enix will be serving as the new giant corporation’s CEO. “We feel that with the combined power of Japan’s two largest third party publishers, we will be able to re-capture the Japanese dominance over the video game development industry.”
This merger comes as both companies have struggled with slowing markets worldwide, and Japanese games beginning to lose their prominence in Western markets.

Along with the merger, the company has announced 3 new games, one of them being a new RPG tentatively titled Tales of Dragon Questia. As the title implies, the game will be cross-over title utilizing characters from both the Tales of series and the Dragon Quest series.

The game is currently in development for Nintendo DS, which, incidentally, is the only platform the new Squareco Bandix will be developing on.

“In all honesty,” spokesman Jerry Nishida said, “every other platform on the market currently sucks huge donkey balls.”

Nishida went on to bash the Wii for being a ‘toy for old, fat people,’ and called the Xbox 360 ‘a steaming pile of garbage.’ When asked about the PlayStation 3, Nishida replied that they had never heard of such a console, and asked if we weren’t talking about an over-priced BluRay player by the same name.

When asked about the future of currently in-development titles like Final Fantasy XIII, newly promoted Vice President of Creative Development, Tetsuya Nomura replied that “all currently developing titles will be immediately ported to the DS.” He refused to take any more questions on the subject.

The fact that this merger has stayed quiet just until its announcement makes this huge news just that much more of a shock. I, for one, don’t know if I can support a mega-corporation like this when they only cater to the lowest common denominator.

What do you guys think?

UPDATE: As most of you likely guessed, this was an April Fool's joke. Square Enix and Namco Bandai have not (as far as I'm aware) announced any plans to merge. ...At least, not with each other.