Final Fantasy XIII team 'aiming' for three-DVD release

by Andrew Yoon on Aug 20th 2009 3:20PM

Click to embiggen.

Square Enix's decision to simultaneously launch Final Fantasy XIII on both PS3 and Xbox 360 certainly caused a lot of fan fervor. With each DVD holding far less data than a Blu-ray disc, PlayStation fanboys soon came up with mock-ups of the 360 version of the game, some with as many as 40 discs! Xbox 360 users won't have to worry, though, as reality is shaping up quite differently.

Speaking at GamesCom, Square Enix's Yoshinori Kitase commented: "This isn't the final count yet, but we're aiming for about three discs." The team is working to compress as much as possible, while still keeping the quality high. Interestingly enough, at three discs, Final Fantasy XIII won't take the crown for the 360 game with the highest disc count. Instead, Microsoft's exclusive Lost Odyssey manages to stay on top with its four.

Releasing a multi-disc Final Fantasy game isn't new for Square Enix. In fact, the company launched Final Fantasy VII on three discs back in the PS1 era. In spite of the burden of having to change discs, we heard that game turned out pretty alright.

Final Fantasy XIII (GamesCom 2009)

Tags: disc-changing, dvd, final-fantasy, final-fantasy-13, final-fantasy-xiii, gamescom-2009, Microsoft, square-enix, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (175)

I wonder if they're going to keep the Japanese audio track on the 360 version. . .otherwise I might as well just buy the PS3 one.

probably wont just weird how you would want an audio track you dont understand so you can read subtitles. FF games always had excellent voice actors so youre not missing much.

@deepfried - Because American voice acting is often atrocious, and I don't want to mute the game entirely. I've been less than impressed of what I've seen from the VAs in 13 so far for the English version.

lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgWrKRu-ry4&feature=related

You're just a weaboo. 99% of the time the Japanese voice acting sucks too you're just too stupid to know and whack it to anything from Japan.

@shadow - And you're just an idiot, but that's expected of 99% of the posters on here. :)

Actually 99% of all videogame voice acting is awful. Given the choice I'd rather hear some cool sounding nonsensical voices and read the lines.

Here here. Even if the Japanese voice acting does suck, I'd rather listen to it and read subtitles then listen to whiney American voice acting. I here that enough already...

That's funny, cause whenever I watch videos of Japanese games with their audio tracks still in place I can't help but think about how awful and ridiculous it sounds...

Itza me! Mario!!

You know, I don't necessarily understand why people are bitching about the lack of japanese dubs now, considering the fact that all Final Fantasy games since X had an english only track.

No Japanese audio track for 360. The French Canadian version Of Mass Effect, Halo 3, etc with French audio track were on an entirely different packaging with a tag saying "French only". PS3 games like Killzone 2, etc have the option of around 7 different languages menus and tracks in the same disc.

I would rather listen to whiney American voices than squeaky Japanese women that all sound horrible, and similar. The male Japanese voices are generally OK but I've never heard a single Japanese female voice that sounded good to me.

preston, next time just lie and tell people you know japanese.

99% of female voice actors suck, regardless of what language they speak. But at least in Japanese I can think to myself "Who knows, maybe everyone actually sounds like that in Japan" instead of listening to the English track and thinking "WHO THE HELL SOUNDS LIKE THIS?"

Especially if its a Bandai game/animu. Seriously Bandai, how about you spend more than 5 dollars on your English voice actors?

True, it's the only way you won't get insulted for wanting a choice.

English and japanese are both foreign languages to me, but I still preffer them (be it English in movies or tv series, and japanese in anime and games) instead of a spanish dub (latin spanish, my mother language), because it retains it's original feeling, even if it's worse/bad. And I don't see the problem with reading subs neither.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAA4JX8l03g

@ ShadowXOR

You just gave me a great idea. I'm going to dub Japanese porn with American voice actors. I always feel guilty watching Japanese porn because the women often look distressed and sound like they're being forced into it. You wanna go 50/50 on this new business venture?

The grain of truth behind the superiority of Japanese voice actors is the fact that the Japanese voice actors are generally celebrities in their own right, and thus command a higher salary and generally just put more passion into their work. The American voice actors aren't bad, but they aren't anyone worth writing home about. I mean, you might recognize that Orihime and Hinata have the same actress, but you won't know who the hell she is (or have particular reason to care)

I'm skipping like half of the replies here and aimming for dead center:

The first 9 Final Fantasies will ALWAYS be supperior to the new series.

No voice acting. The voice I gave Locke is 10x better than any voice actor scratching for a paycheck could possibly do.

Imagination. You can still use it.

I have to agree with Preston: most JRPG fans and anime fans I see on the net and real life prefer original voice acting than the english dub.

i'm sorry but i'm on the pro side of the original japanese language debate. i'd much rather have it in the original language that it was intended, no matter the medium or the country it came from. If i watch a french movie, damn right i'm gonna watch it in french. Thats how the original creators made it, thats how they wanted it.
besides, even though its a language I may not understand, I've seen far too often the japanese voice actors sound much more convincing and emotional than the english counterparts. Part of that comes from the english actors usually have to have lines written and spoken that makes the voice match the lip movement more closely, in part making some of the acting sound stunted or dry. The actor may be a really great actor, but if they have to cut their sentance short or put an awkward pause in it because the onscreen persona's lips stopped moving, well its gonna sound weird, right?

None of this half arsed bullshit - every reply to this comment needs to be 3 stars, or no stars.
Which will I become? Time will tell.

Lol "might"? The PS3 will be the best version if you have the choice. It's the lead dev platform and will ship on one Blu-ray. I'm definitely getting the PS3 version of both FF-XIII and FF-XIII Versus (which might be exclusive to ps3 anyway). Hell I pretty much only buy PS3 games in the last 6+ months away there is just too much good stuff on it.

I do have to laugh at the english speakers that think Japanese voice acting is "better". I have a Japanese buddy who informs me that, in fact, anime voice actors are just as shite as the english voice actors. The Japanese actors simply have an advantage because they aren't trying to do a dub over a language that is structured entirely different from their own. realistically I don't have a preference. I enjoy the english track (always good for a laugh) and I enjoy the japanese track because reading doesn't frighten me like it does most people these days.

No. Both version (360 and PS3) will be the same. There will be NO Japanese audio for the PS3 version.

I'm not saying a word.

Of course, you said five.

Word

My brain bloweded up.

Xbox 360 Fanboy self defense mode in 3,2,1...

http://jooyeol.files.wordpress.com/2006/05/explosion.jpg

Can't they just make a shorter, more concise 1 disc version? It's quality we want, not quantity.

Then you should probably be looking towards another company.

Have you not heard Squeenix's newest motto? We run franchises into the ground.

Besides, the last time Squeenix put a Final Fantasy on 3 DVDs was number 7.

If I remember correctly, that one was a legendary critical and commercial failure.

Sephiroth? More like SWAPhiroth, amirite?

OK, that was smooth. I just read the full posting and realized that I basically repeated the last paragraph from the story.

I don't really think they'll be able to boast about having 3 DVDs, they'd probably prefer to release the game in one disc, but apparently it's not possible.
I don't see problem in swapping game discs in a linear fashion though. It's not like getting up from the couch is going to kill you :P

I die a little more inside, every time I leave the couch.

@Copa

This pic's for you:

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2009/08/wowmagpic.jpg

GeneralDeath, that's just gas.

Well Victor, some of us happen to have moats filled with gators in between the couch and XBox, but I guess that doesn't matter to you fancy folks and your living in houses ways!

I remember, back in the day, when it was known that FFVII was going to have not 2 discs, but 3, everyone's head exploded. They were excited that there was so much content that it couldn't be contained to one or even two discs, which at the time, was quite expansive.

When FFVIII was known to contain 4!!! people were even more thrilled.

The story is the same as it was then. Yet somehow it matters negatively now, when it shouldn't at all. Funny, I blame the easy availability of the internet!!!!

"The story is the same as it was then. Yet somehow it matters negatively now, when it shouldn't at all. Funny, I blame the easy availability of the internet!!!"

It's because the alternative was multiple (and highly expensive) N64 cartridges... which would in reality mean no game or a completely different games. The alternative now is a single BR. People keep trying to compare the two situations without considering that the two situations aren't the same at all.

That said, having the game at all is better than no game. And I'm pretty certain that 360 owners will be able to rip the game to the hard drive providing they have the HDD space.

i don't know which is worse: swapping disks(360) or an install like mgs4's (ps3)

I've found that after 10 hours it's actually nice to stand up even if you have to walk the brutal 5 feet to change discs.

I prefer the 360 install it all and then don't have to swap the discs...

Also makes me wonder why the PS3 installs are so stinking slow. It's about 5 minutes per disc for the 360 but MGS4 had to stop multiple times for 20 minute installs?

I was just thinking the same thing. Installing between each chapter was way slower than swapping a disk. Who knows they might let you put two of the three disks to hard drive and keep a single disk in the console kinda like some PC games do for authentication. before someone yells fanboy at me I have a PS3, 360, and a Wii. So it does not really matter to me and disk swapping does not bother me I did it to get through xenogears and FFVII loved both of them.

Hunter....MGS4 had one 18 minute install....the rest were under 15 and if I'm not mistaken one was just 7-8

I don’t mind swapping discs that much. If anything the older games made me feel like I was taking on a new chapter when I got to disc 2, disc 3, and then the penultimate disc 4. Each disc marked the end of a segment of the story. I remember playing FF7 and seeing Aeris die, Cloud grieve and swear vengeance, then the screen slowly fade and telling my shocked self to insert Disc 2. It seemed like an appropriate time for a switch. I had just finished the first third of the story and now I, gripping the second book in my hand, would start the next part of the saga.

DVDs are much smaller and much older so the 360 reader can read DVDs at a much faster rate therefore copy from them at a faster rate too.

The blu-ray is a much newer media and the PS3 being the first console to use it has to deal with a much slower read and therefore it'll copy data from the disc at a much slower pace not to mention its much bigger.

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Final Fantasy XIII team 'aiming' for three-DVD release

Final Fantasy XIII (GamesCom 2009)

Reader Comments (175)

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