News

We recorded just after the announcement last week of the Xbox One. So, naturally, we joined in on tearing it up a bit. We also talked a little bit about what Square Enix might be willing to do for the console, but it's a little hard to tell since we barely know what they're doing for any consoles right now.

Additionally, I'm sick through the whole thing, Tiddles might be outing himself as an eBay scammer, and we had a couple minor hiccups in recording because we tried to get together over a new medium this time around. We do get into a lot of good detail about what's happening with the new Microsoft machine, though, so enjoy!

Source: CoNcast Episode Four, The CoNcast on iTunes

It was confirmed today that Mike Fischer, president and CEO of the American arm of Square Enix, left the company earlier in May to join Amazon Japan as Vice President of Music and Video. Fischer was previously at a few other gaming giants before his role at Squenix, but now is leaving the gaming space "on good terms."

Just as Yoichi Wada left the flagship earlier this year, it's presumed that not meeting sales expectations for the major releases over the last year doomed Fischer's tenure, though I'm hearing that the expectations being quoted were a bit ludicrous to begin with. There are also rumors that there may be big shakeups coming in North America relative to the mobile release strategy or even that entire division of the company; this could be the sign of an executive getting his golden parachute as the plane goes down.

The most recent "big" game from the North American division was last year's Quantum Conundrum.

Source: Polygon (via Kotaku)

The CoNcast gang digresses immediately in this episode, becoming waylaid by the simple fact that one person is playing Skyrim and two more are playing Bioshock Infinite. Recovering a bit, I then elect to thoroughly entertain everyone by talking about the progress being made in the new Final Fantasy VI content. Finally, we each take a stab at the myriad circumstances that brought us to the Final Fantasy series and also to CoN, inspired by this recent forum topic.

This one was a tricky one to edit, let me tell you! We had to shave out almost 40% of the entire recording to get to a runtime that wouldn't induce tears in our listeners. However, it does give us a lot of fodder if we ever want to have an outtakes show, so there's that.

Source: The CoNcast Subscription Feed, The CoNcast on iTunes

For all the folks still hoping for a 3D remake of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, in the vein of Final Fantasy IV DS, there's another bit of bad news now. Apparently, last week, a Square Enix Japan member asked Squenix' Shinji Hashimoto directly when we could expect to see those games announced, and the answer wasn't good.

To quote Siliconera's translation, Hashimoto responded: "As for FF5 and 6, there are technical problems; presently these are also undecided."

Now, of course, that doesn't mean never. In fact, as Siliconera reports, it probably means something more uplifting: in order for Squenix to know that there are technical problems, the odds are that they must have at least looked into the opportunity, and they might have even gotten so far as to try a few things in the FF4DS engine. Or, of course, it could mean that Hashimoto is blowing smoke and that answer is just a way of brushing off the question and the company has no interest in making the games. You can let your own gaming-related paranoia level be the judge.

Source: Siliconera

Slated for July 3, Square Enix are releasing in Japan a "remastered" version of the Final Fantasy IV Soundtrack. Later in the year, similar albums will be released for Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI. There's not much detail beyond that so far, which naturally leaves some questions. The first question might well be the tracklist - will these albums be a full OST, which would require a few CDs, or is it a single-CD "best of" compilation as some other albums have been in the past? Second, though, and possibly more important, is "what on earth does a remaster of a SNES soundtrack entail?"

Given that these albums are explicitly called remasters, and not anything like the piano collections or orchestral arrangements that have been done in the past, it would seem that these new albums will still be chiptunes as they were originally, but perhaps that the chips used to make the tunes will be of a more modern variety than twenty years ago, creating the opportunity for more realistic synthesized sounds.

If you want to find out, you'll need to import, most likely - Squenix are not currently speaking of any Western release for any of these albums.

Source: Siliconera

Things are a little different this time around for the CoNcast. Lasz took the day off, so, for the first time we're rounding out our four with a special guest: longtime CoN member Jav, also known as Dragon Fire here at the forums. Jav's delivered to us for this episode a brand new, never-before-heard theme tune, and he joins me, Tiddles, and DP to talk about it a bit.

While we're on the subject of music, we delve into the concept of the gaming-related mobile phone ringtone. It seems like anyone who really wants to make sure that everyone knows they're a Final Fantasy fan has a version of the victory fanfare on their mobile, so we instead have a look deeper to see what other tracks would make good ringtones for the gamer who always has their phone on their person, both from within the Final Fantasy series and further out into gaming as a whole.

We're talking about so much media this time around that you get extra links. First, of course, to the podcast itself, but then we have two others! If you want to hear the full version of Jav's chiptune theme, called "Neko Neko Mawaii," we've got it on YouTube, and then we've also made a YouTube playlist of all of the music we talked about ringtone-ifying as well. Enjoy!

Source: CoNcast Episode Four, The CoNcast Subscription Feed, The CoNcast on iTunes