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Sometime this week - it seems like nobody knows or is allowed to say exactly when, from my reading - there is going to be a press-only event to play Kingdom Hearts III. Obviously, we're not quite "pressy" enough to get that invite, but that's okay! Even from the outside looking in, there's some valuable information just in knowing that this event is going to occur. For one, having an event like this definitely implies that the "2018" release date is going to stick; we're almost halfway through the year, but it's definitely reasonable to assume now that they will manage to at least hit a holiday release. For another, the game must be coming together pretty well in Squenix' eyes, or else they wouldn't be taking the step to let people play a functional version of the game before E3 starts.

In any event, journalists who get a chance to play the game will be allowed to start posting their thoughts at 9am Eastern this coming Friday, May 18. We'll know then roughly how things are looking, and if they are given any other information, like a release window or announcement that Steamboat Willie is the Big Bad, at that time.

Source: Gematsu

They're still not doing a real standalone presser, having discontinued that practice after the 2015 version of E3, but for 2018 Square Enix will be doing a prerecorded broadcast on June 11, starting at 1pm Eastern time, or 6pm GMT. It will be broadcast over YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and a streaming network called Mixer that I've never actually heard of because I'm not young and/or cool. It will also be available via Square Enix' E3 microsite.

Beyond that, details are a bit thin so far. We know that the broadcast will be available in Japanese and English, and there will be no physical location to watch the stream in person at or near E3, with the company relying solely on the distributed stream. The company does not plan to pre-publish a list of games to be discussed, nor is there any word as to whether any of the major pressers will include any Squenix game information in advance. Of course, that leaves us plenty of room to speculate! I think it's a lock that we'll see much more new information around Kingdom Hearts III and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, quite likely that there will be some new content for Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy XV, Dissidia NT and the ongoing mobile games discussed, and not out of the realm of possibility that we'll get announcements of some new mobile games or ports for immediate release. I doubt we'll get anything out of Final Fantasy VII, though.

Source: Gematsu

It's time again for another Final Fantasy concert roundup, as Square Enix have just published another new set of dates to fill in some gaps in the year's slate. If you look back to our update in February, you'll see that there were already quite a few shows scheduled, starting with several for Distant Worlds - Paris this weekend, Vancouver and Cleveland in June, San Francisco in August, and North Carolina in October. On top of those, now you've got these 2018 options (and the start of 2019!):

• Houston, July 7
• Washington, DC, August 10
• Seattle, September 12 and 13
• Rochester, NY, September 25
• Boca Raton, FL, November 2 and 3
• Denver, May 2 and 3, 2019

If you're one of those folks hoping for a Nobuo Uematsu meetup, you'll want the DC and Seattle shows, for now.

If you've seen Distant Worlds many times or just want the smaller experience, we still have A New World. Boston's show is still tomorrow night, and until now the only other upcoming shows were in Europe, in Prague and Vienna. The new shows:

• Rosemont, IL, May 19 and 20
• Fort Worth, TX, June 9
• Washington, DC, August 12
• Philadelphia, September 21
• St. Paul, Minnesota, September 28
• Ann Arbor, Michigan, September 29
• Montclair, New Jersey, November 2

You'll note that if you're really hardcore, you can see both Distant Worlds and A New World in Washington in the same weekend, and meet Uematsu twice! And, if you're doing the Texas show, composer Naoshi Mizuta from Parasite Eve II and the second two games of the Final Fantasy XIII series will be in attendance there.

This looks like a really great lineup for the rest of the year. Nothing I'll be able to make it to myself, unfortunately, but I'm excited that they seem to really be branching out!

Source: Distant Worlds, A New World

Square Enix have this week announced the creation of a new internal studio for games development in Tokyo. Called "Luminous Productions" in a likely nod to the Luminous Engine used to power Final Fantasy XV, the new studio will be run by Square Enix Chief Operating Officer Hajime Tabata and will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the mothership. Based on the press release, the new studio will be focused on AAA-tier games, with the implication that the studio will be targeted towards new intellectual properties.

That said, the seed of the studio appears to be the "creative team behind Final Fantasy XV," so there remains the possibility that this studio may be tasked with future Final Fantasy games; they're certainly looking for fresh blood as well, as they have nearly thirty job listings on their new website. All that information makes it impossible to predict what sorts of projects they may undertake until a planned announcement later this year, but current evidence certainly seems to say they're looking for home runs.

Source: Gematsu

Final Fantasy XIV, given its tenure and many expansions, naturally has a huge number of musical selections. Not all of them may be widely known due to the game's status as an MMO among many more single-player entries in the series, of course, and the recent Regalia Playlist Championship featured just one song from the game (and it failed to clear the first round due to a rough matchup).

But really, though, this is a game that, when I compiled tracks for Regalia, turned up three hundred and twenty individual tracks. That's a lot of options! And now, if you're heading to E3 this year, you can see a live orchestra play through a number of them at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The concert is called "Eorzean Symphony," and will be played on June 15 and 16 at 8pm. Producer Naoki Yoshida, composer Masayoshi Soken, and featured vocalist Susan Calloway will be in attendance at both shows, with VIP tickets available to meet all three at $189 a ticket. Standard tickets start at $59.

If you prefer your concerts to be a little more European, though, and are planning a trip to Gamescom this summer, you will be able to take the relatively short trip from Cologne to Dortmund to see the same show August 24 and 25th.

A job posting appeared on Friday from Square Enix, looking for "core members" of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. It appears that this specific listing is for a level planner, laying out areas in the Remake world using Unreal Engine 4. The listing also mentions potential roles for battle planners, designers, and engineers (in this context, likely game developers), with some of those roles coming from inside Square Enix and others being outside hires.

Part of this news was new to me in the case that the development of the game was previously being done outside of Square Enix, by a company called CyberConnect. Now it appears that headquarters has fully assimilated the project, hence the need for some hiring and organizational shifting to accommodate the work.

This news is also a bit illuminating as a look inside the company's practices that I personally haven't seen before. At least for this role, they are not looking for a minimum level of experience, implying that the hiring will be done based mainly on prior portfolio. The salary starts at about USD $34,000 a year, with no upper bound mentioned; that would seem to me like they're willing to bring in a very junior person for this specific role if necessary. I don't know what game devs typically make in Japan, but I do know that you wouldn't get much of a developer here in the States for that money. They also promise a forty-hour work week, which I would find a little difficult to believe in this industry and on a game of this importance.

The other big conclusion you can draw from this is probably a bit more sad - if they're just now bringing the work in house and are hiring for roles like these currently, that would probably indicate that there hasn't been much progress in development yet. I wouldn't hold my breath to see much new this year, though the late-year Tokyo Game Show might be an option.

Source: Siliconera, Kotaku

The most RPG-related news from yesterday's Nintendo Direct came via Square Enix, who announced that SaGa: Scarlet Grace would be ported from its original PlayStation Vita release to Switch later this year. Scarlet Grace is the latest game in the series, released in late 2016 for Vita; as of yet, there has never been a release of the game outside of Japan. As of its release, it was also the first new main-line SaGa game in over a decade.

When this news first broke yesterday at Nintendo Direct, the announcement was specific for Switch, leading Western SaGa fans to worry that there would be no port this time around either. However, since that time, Squenix have confirmed that the game is also coming for PS4, iOS, Android, and Windows, all for release this year. While there's no specific confirmation of a release outside of Japan yet, it is incredibly unlikely that the company will release for smartphones and Windows and not release an English translation simultaneously. This official confirmation is sure to come soon.

Source: Siliconera

Wait, is this a thing? Did Square Enix really drop this on us out of nowhere, or have I been so oblivious that I just missed it? Either way, on Steam it is. There's a $14.99 "Limited Edition" Chrono Trigger for sale on Steam for Windows as we speak.

It's based on the iOS/Android versions of the Nintendo DS release, following suit from other SNES-era Square games that have made it to Steam. This means that it has the additional dungeon content and ending from that NDS version, so it's another opportunity to try that out and use the CoN walkthrough if you never have. Based on the screenshots, it looks like the art has been softened a little bit in this release, with the sprites not quite as sharp as one would remember from the older versions, but fairly similar to the mobile versions.

The system specs here are predictably low, and the price isn't bad for folks who haven't played CT before or have never had a chance to do the later-added content. Of course, it will likely show up in a nice big Steam sale pretty soon, too, so enjoy!

We've got some new concert news coming up for 2018, and it's been a while since we've done a major update. So, buckle up and hope for some new concerts coming your way soon!

The newest announcement for Distant Worlds is Cleveland, in what I believe is a first for the series. Ohio fans, be on the lookout with tickets already on sale for the June show. The rest of the 2018 scheduled shows lay out like this:

• Paris, April 21 (Matinee and Evening Shows)
• Vancouver, June 1
• Cleveland, June 16
• San Francisco, August 4
• Durham, North Carolina, October 13

Durham is also a new location for the tour, so I hope that's good news for some of you! At the moment, Uematsu is confirmed solely for the Paris shows.

For A New World, we just got an announcement for a new show in Boston this week. Tickets are already on sale for the April 20th show, and VIP tickets are available. The rest of the year for the smaller chamber music series looks this way:

• Honolulu, March 4 at Kawaii Kon
• Quebec City, April 7
• Boston, April 20
• Prague, May 5
• Vienna, May 6

I literally can not pick which of those cities would be the best to see this show - seeing a chamber orchestra in Prague or Vienna just seems right, and who could complain about seeing Final Fantasy music performed in Hawaii? - but alas, I'll be attending none of these.

While one might have predicted that Final Fantasy XV would have run its course after almost eighteen months, it's clear that Square Enix want to be able to operate the game much like an MMO, with new revisions coming frequently for the foreseeable future. We've covered in the past that the game has plans going out through all of 2018, but a number of new announcements were made today with specifics for the first quarter of this year.

While we've known since last August that XV was being ported for Windows on Steam, today we got a launch trailer and system specs for the release, as well as a date: March 6. As one might suspect, if you want this game in 4K, you're going to need a serious Windows rig, including a GTX 1080 Ti. Also worth noting for some folks is that the game isn't Steam-only now; the launch trailer also confirms that the game will be available via Origin - the first Final Fantasy game to show up on that network.

For those who don't already have the game on console, March 6 will also debut the Royal Edition of the game on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The Royal Edition will actually be the same game released for Windows, as it will contain the standard game, all current DLC, and a number of new options:

• Expanded Crown City Map with a new challenge dungeon and boss fights
• Control over the party's boat, allowing for shoreline exploration and new fishing spots
• A new accessory unlocking a new Armiger ability
• First-person mode
• New cosmetic items
• New quest for Regalia upgrades
• More worldbuilding content in findable items and conversations

Anyone who does already have the game can purchase the new content via DLC for $19.99 on March 6, but I'm not yet sure if that actually will contain all previous DLC or just the new items in Royal Edition.

In the meantime, console gamers will get a free DLC update next week. The big news there is that Aranea will be available as a sparring partner at camp, which could be fun for a time. There will also be a "standby" option at camp, though it's not clear what that means exactly, and new shop items at the trading post in Altissia. There will also be the usual bug fixes and minor updates.

In short, it sounds to me like March 6 is going to be the time to try out XV if you've been waiting; or, if you have been resisting buying anything but the base game, it might just be time to dust it off and pick back up. If that $20 price tag is essentially the "GOTY" version that rolls up everything released so far, that's a pretty great deal.

Source: Siliconera, Gematsu