Square Enix 'looking into' Xbox 360 release of Final Fantasy Versus XIII

by JC Fletcher on May 19th 2010 11:00AM

During an investor meeting in Tokyo, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada indicated that the company is considering a multiplatform release for Final Fantasy Versus XIII. An attendee asked Wada about the possibility of putting the currently PS3-exclusive Fabula Nova Crystallis game on Xbox 360 like Final Fantasy XIII, in order to boost sales outside of Japan, to which Wada responded (according to Andriasang's translation) "We'll be looking into it internally until right before the formal announcement."

Wada did not mention when that "formal announcement" would take place. E3 is coming up, so it's entirely possible Wada is building up to that, having expressed his hope for an E3 unveil previously. But we've given up on expecting this game to become real any time soon. When it stops existing only in secret trailer form and becomes an actual, playable game, we'll be shocked, regardless of the platform (or platforms).

Update: Wada responded on Twitter (via Andriasang) to speculation about his comments: "It looks like the 'net is heating up. Versus on Xbox? What I said at the earnings press conference was just that until a formal announcement is made at the announcement time, all points about all titles are not finalized." In other words, he is stressing that Square hasn't made any decisions.

Source

Tags: fabula-nova-crystallis, final-fantasy, final-fantasy-versus-xiii, final-fantasy-xiii, Microsoft, rpg, square-enix, Xbox-360, yoichi-wada

Reader Comments (217)

I dont know about anyone else but the last one couldn't even keep my attention for a day, the characters just suck for me weren't interesting at all.

Get better voice actors to square.

This is unrelated to this but does anyone else want a new legends of dragoon game? Because this guy does!

this is soooooooooooooooo unrelated but, I want to know if anyone wants a few hundred Russian prostitutes? I hear Quagmire is having a sale

http://www.randomfunnypicture.com/pictures/578a64a3177ca66d975c5521e00ab238.jpg

This is semi-related to an unrelated post: Giggity.......

Bringing this back on topic...

From what Square has said, Versus is bringing back the overworld and airship. So I am very excited about this game.

Well, if it goes multiplatform, they might scrap the airship and make it linear to fit 3 DVDs. Otherwise, it'll have to go 4 DVDs or more just to make the world explorable like Lost Odyssey.

Yoichi Wada is just waiting for Microsoft's bribe to officially announce that it'll go multiplatform.

"just to make the world explorable like Lost Odyssey."

I thought lost oddyssey was narrow and linear as a string, with no real world map?

@ bm: It's a bit linear but you're able to explore the world on the 4th discs near the end of the story. FFXIII is the most linear RPG I've played this generation, and I hated it.

Ballistic, didn't you just describe FFXIII as well?

Does any of this even matter? Sony doesn't pay for games so it will be on the 360.

"but you're able to explore the world on the 4th discs"

You mean explore as in actually explore, or just select places from a menu?

Cause I want 4 more DVDs in my game wallet.

I can't see how people complain about the multiple dvds. It is not a big deal at all.

literally the only reason to complain is because the competition will be only on one disc.....because their are better ways to go about things now. Even if HD-DVD failed MS still should have baked it into the system, at least then there would not be a need for more disc for some games....pretty sure the developers would appreciate that as well as retailers since more disc means more shelf and stock room space taken up

Boxes with more disks aren't really noticeably bigger these days.

@ Acosta02: Have you seen the Non-American case for Lost Odyssey?

Nope. Maybe a fourth disc forces them into a bigger box? All I know is my FFXIII case and my (*shudder*) Blue Dragon case are just as big as any other.

@ Acosta02: 3 discs is the limit we can cram in the spindle at the normal DVD case width. I can guarantee you that with the FFXIII graphical quality + world exploration with airship, it'll have to be at least 4 discs. Lost Odyssey didn't really had nice graphics.

sure they aren't Acosta....for VHS cassettes.....

I have a few 3 & 4 disc Blu-ray movie cases that are the size of VHS cassettes....

I mean I love my LotR Blu-ray set but 4 or 5 more sets like this and I am going to have to get another Blu-ray/DVD cabinet

They do that intentionally on blu-rays though Chris, because people that pay more than the price of a regular blu-ray want to "feel" like they're getting something more. It's stupid, but people feel gyped when they spend $80 on a blu-ray TV show and get a regular size blu-ray case.

It's the same reason that many multiple disk blu-ray sets don't need to even be multiple blu-rays, but there's this idea that TV shows and stuff have to come on these big multi disc sets or you're not getting your money's worth, even though that's totally stupid.

Can they "formally announce" they won't subject us to a 30 hour tutorial again?

You subjected yourself to that. I don't even know which game you were stuck on...

Can someone explain to me what a tutorial is?

Because I thought it meant a part of the game that contains a lot of instruction, but I'm getting the impression that it really means when you get to a giant ass field.

Oh god, I really hope the next Super Mario Bros has something other than a tutorial.

Alex, when most people talk about FFXIII's "30 hour tutorial", they're talking about the game right up until the room before you fight Barthandelus for the first time. That's the moment when they stop presenting you with new mechanics and allow you to choose your party freely.

This is great news! I hope everyone gets to play more Final Fantasy games!

Some SE fans are god-awful to talk to, so the more diverse the fan, the better!

There is no reason why they should not put it on 360, more sales for square.

yea i'm with you guys. this is not surprising at all and even as a PS3 gamer primarily (even though i have all the consoles), i've kind of grown to accept that 3rd party exclusives are going by the wayside. the games cost too much to make for the developers to handicap themselves out of the gate by not reaching as big an installed base as possible. plus i'm all for more people being able to play more good games.

actually that's not completely true, it does upset me if the game gets delayed because MS paid to have it released the same day. now that part does piss me off but other than that it's cool.

@ WINterfang

try Tales of Vesperia if you want a great JRPG on 360. that and Blue Dragon are the main reasons i bought a 360 honestly.....Blue Dragon wasn't as great but Vesperia is one of the best RPG's i've played this gen. the battle system is top notch.

I believe it is kind of weird when a 3rd party game company decides to make a game exclusively for one platform without leveraging any features only available on the platform. They might as well make it multiplatform, even with the extended development time if it means they will make more money than they would have the exclusive route. Or are they interested in making the game for a single platform so that they can get early sales before their financial-year/whatever-you-call-it ends so they can impress their investors?

the real question is, who didn't see this coming?

well seeing that the sales were less on the 360 in Japan...I for one didn't

Sony fanboys in denial.

I think XIII was kind of the bellwether for SE multi-platform releases.

If XIII hadn't sold so well on the 360, I don't think this discussion would be happening.

@ Vincent
The game wasn't even released in Japan on the 360

the only problem I have is that I probably will have to wait an extra year on top of the 4+ years they have already made me wait to make it a worldwide release or something. Like seriously, why do developers announce a game 5 years before it comes out? Its f'n torture!

yeppers..saw this one coming last year. Games are big business and have even bigger budgets, if that's what it takes to get the cash to keep cranking out the hits, go for it...

damn this article went from 13 comments to 60 in about 5 minutes.

Okay, sorry I meant US (it's summer, leave my brain to rot.)

Besides: 494,300 units 360, 828,200 PS3

I was letting the numbers do the talking...

Good point, Vincent. They should definitely go for 828,200 sales instead of the 1,322,500 possible sales. It's just good business sense.

(but actually it is not)

Acosta the point he is getting at is this: "Does the development cost outweigh the amount of sales we will get for the port?" if they feel like they won't make any money on it then they won't do it....which is why they didn't even bother making a Japanese version of XIII on the 360 most likely

@Acosta02

So all the funds to put it on the 360, plus packaging 2 additional discs is insignificant?

@ Chris D.

Thank you! That's exactly what I meant (but I screwed up US/Japan...sigh).

And besides that, I actually want the game on the 360. So its not that I'm trying to be a Sony Fanboy about it or anything.

And if you count all the sales in the world, the 360 version represents only a mere sale compared to the PS3 version.

I think almost any company would pay the salary of a handful of people to work on porting and those additional discs if they could sell a half a million more copies. A lot of games nowadays spend two-years in development and don't hit that mark.

@Acosta it could be quite insignificant.....but that goes back to all together cost.....I mean if they had made a Japanese 360 port and it cost them $1 million to do it.....but they only sold like 5,000 copies.....at $60 each they lose money....a LOT of money....just not worth it...

If I remember from gamesindustry.biz, porting a game costs the equivalent of 15% of the development budget of the "original" version.

"If I remember from gamesindustry.biz, porting a game costs the equivalent of 15% of the development budget of the "original" version."

Okay, so if this is true then it cost them 15% of the original and made them 60% as much money as the original?

Sounds like a profit in my book.

Companies build games FROM SCRATCH and hope and pray that they'll sell 500,000 units in the first few months of release. So why in the world would anyone think that having a small team of devs simply port a game to generate 500,000 new sales would not be financially worth it?

And if as a PS3 apologist you don't think it is, then you need to take a look at the oodles of PS3 ports that have sold less than that and still continued on in the next iteration.

There's no way any sane person would think that 500,000 copies sold in the first few months for a port isn't worth it. That's about what Bioshock PS3 sold (in a lot longer than a few months), and they had no second thoughts about making Bioshock 2 for the PS3. Bioshock 2 has sold around the same, and if there's another Bioshock you can bet it will come to the PS3 as well.

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Square Enix 'looking into' Xbox 360 release of Final Fantasy Versus XIII

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