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Got an iPhone? Love Final Fantasy Tactics? As we reported back during E3, Square Enix is bringing FFT and Secret of Mana to the iPhone (and, presumably at some point, the iPad).

Well, the announced release date for the game, 15 September, has now come and gone, and word has come today that the game has obviously been delayed, and no new release date has been announced as yet.

Frankly, I forgot this was coming out, because I still haven't finished my PSP game. I don't really need it for my iPhone. Hope it's not to disappointing for any of you wanting it, though, particularly if you were waiting for it on the iPad.

Source: Gizmodo

In addition to the pre-TGS news we shared the other day, Square Enix has been releasing more info over the course of the week in preparation for the weekend's open-to-the-public exhibits. The bottom line for all of this is that Square Enix is showing some major love to PSP at this Tokyo Game Show, and that smugglers inside the show are bringing out some video that people have been waiting a very long time to see.

On Wednesday, some early screenshots from the Tactics Ogre remake for PSP showed up on andriasang. They're nothing really unexpected, but they do look great, pretty much exactly as fans should expect them to look. However, yesterday out of TGS came a blowout of screens and information for upcoming PSP releases, including the announcement of the Japan-only Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix, and a few more screens from The 3rd Birthday. Additionally, more info was released for [duodecim], the new Dissidia game. First, there will be small product-code tie-ins between [duodecim] and the two aforementioned games, which will allow Lightning to dress up as Aya Brea, and Cloud to change from his Final Fantasy VII look to his Kingdom Hearts costume. It's doubtful that these codes will make the leap to the West, though, as the Final Mix game won't even be released here. [duodecim] also showed a control chart at TGS, for players wanting to try the beta in the booth. andriasang reports that the controls are pretty similar to that of the original. Something new, though, is that Lightning will be bringing her Paradigm Shifts to the Dissidia series - no word yet as to whether other characters might get a similar additional battle system.

Moving away from the PSP somewhat, there's good news for people who still want to see Final Fantasy Versus and Agito XIII. A YouTube user at the show was able to record video from the Squenix booth for both games, and while Square Enix successfully got them yanked from YouTube already, the cat is in fact out of the bag and Kotaku has the videos hosted currently. They may not last up there, either, though, so check them out quick, unless you just want to wait for the non-shakycam official releases that are sure to be forthcoming. Versus shows off some running and jumping, and a battle against a pretty awesome looking Behemoth; Agito shows the more standard cutscenes and battle system that one would expect from the JRPG line. Both are quite short. If you do want to wait for the official discussion of these games straight from Squenix, though, you won't be waiting all that long - it appears that the company will have a conference to display the entire Fabula Nova Crystallis series on 11 January, 2011.

With the press days of TGS now over, I suspect that the news from TGS is all but over as well. However, if you hear anything over the weekend, let us know!

Source: andriasang, Kotaku

The Tokyo Game Show snuck up on me - for some reason I remembered it being later in the year than this last year. Wiki tells me that this is indeed a week earlier than last year, but still, surprise surprise when I woke up this morning!

The actual show doesn't technically open until 16 September (and not to the public until the weekend, sorry to our zero readers comfortably close to Tokyo), but as is always the case, relevant news has started to come in already. andriasang brings us, first, the map of the Square Enix booth for this year's TGS. It's a good way to work out what the big games are going to be, according to the folks at Squenix; note that on the map, virtually all of the booths are the same size, with the biggest single block being dedicated to Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded, The 3rd Birthday, and the new Dissidia Duodenum [duodecim]. Also notable is that Versus XIII and Agito XIII won't be on their own in the booth at all, that Final Fantasy XIV has very small real estate, that Squenix is pushing Fallout: New Vegas (their first game in Japan labeled with the Japanese equivalent of Adults Only) as they publish for Bethesda in Japan, and the curious "Square Enix Online Manga" niche next to FFXIV. I don't remember hearing much about the last one, there, but apparently Squenix rolled out plans for e-distribution of manga in several locales this summer.

If you're one of the folks aching for the new Dissidia, the first screenshots are out featuring Kain and Lightning. Looks like Kain will be fighting on the side of Chaos and Lightning for Cosmos, assuming the factions remain the same in the sequel; the screenshots show Kain spearing Cecil and Lightning fighting against Garland - or, that's what Siliconera say, and it looks more or less like that is what is happening amid all the screen-filling nuttiness going on. [duodecim] isn't expected until 2011, but TGS will have a playable build.

The last news on right now for TGS is some more discussion of what is undoubtably the most important feature of The 3rd Birthday: you can turn the fanservice up to eleven by destroying Aya's clothes. Apparently Aya's so tough now that she doesn't even seem to mind fighting in her underwear - however, game director Hajime Tabata says that it isn't the point of the game, despite the fact that they've shown a lot of interest in the clothes coming off but pretty much zero interest in explaining how they might get rebuilt. Additionally, Tabata has asked players not to play the TGS demo specifically to see the clothes get ripped off, but then also gives hints on how they can most easily be torn off in the demo build. Way to stay classy, chief, and - by the way - also make the game look like it's going to completely suck if you're not buying it specifically to see skin on your PSP screen.

More as the week goes on, no doubt, from the Tokyo Game Show.

Source: Siliconera, andriasang, Square Enix North America

Lots of stuff going on in the monolithic, despairing towers of Square Enix since the last tidbits. The biggest news of this week has been twofold - well, really only onefold unless you're in Japan.

First, as most of you already know but didn't submit to the news section, Dissidia: Final Fantasy is getting a sequel. It's going to come out next year, and it's apparently going to be called Dissidia: Duodecim, which I feel I must from now on reference as "Dissidia: Duodenum." Looks like Lightning and Kain are locked in as new entries, which is sure to please some people at least. For more discussion about this upcoming game, you can hit up the other, less news-posted thread.

Next, despite the Xbox 360 in a decided last place in this generation's console war in Japan, Squenix announced this week that they're porting Final Fantasy XIII to the console for the Japanese market. It's an "International" edition, and it's going to have an "easy" mode (because Westerners are stupid), and all the voice and sub work will be in English. Should be a pretty easy port, that said, hence the rumored release date of 16 December 2010. As one might possibly expect, a good number of Japanese gamers are up in arms about this turn of events.

Still on the topic of Final Fantasy XIII, you might remember that Motomu Toriyama implied at the Japanese launch of the game that downloadable content expansions could be in the cards, a first for a non-MMO entry in the Final Fantasy series. Nearly a year down the road, though, he's now backtracked, confirming that there once were plans for DLC, but now those plans have withered and died, like a summer blossom in mid-September (okay, so I took some poetic license there). I'm not sure how to feel about that. It seems that the single-player JRPG, as a genre, has survived for many good years without needing to bolt on extra content, and I'm not sure how dedicated the Square Enix teams are to adding new content while still keeping it relevant - were they to release DLC, I have a hunch that it would be primarily minigames. Or maybe Final Fantasy XIII Versus. Who knows?

Last week, Square Enix announced that their Japanese operation is pairing with an unannounced American developer for a new "AAA" game. For those not in the know, a AAA game is one of those that is also known as a "console seller," or a "killer app," one of those games that people fall all over themselves to buy and play. They've got big budgets and big expectations, and a lot of hype. This all sounds well and good, but the presentation announcing this was done as a Powerpoint presentation. Yeah, I know that's how most big games start, but doesn't it kind of melt your enthusiasm to know that the business folk are out there announcing how their goals include a "Metacritic score over 90," "intended for core gamers?"

In the not-news, I noticed the other day on Kotaku that Canadian popstress Lights cut her hair like Lightning. Yeah, nobody cares, but she's cute and so is her music. No sense not giving her a bit of play.

Oh, and speaking of not-news, I just yesterday finished up a hack to our beloved forums. You'll note that I've removed the IM client buttons from everyone's posts, so if you want to find someone's MSN, AIM, Y! Messenger, or... ICQ... you'll have to hop into their profile. However, you might also note that in their place I've installed a spot where you can put in your Facebook ID or vanity name, or your Twitter username, and those will now show up with each of your posts. I, naturally, have added links to both the CoN Facebook page and the CoN Twitter account for mine, because why on earth would you want to see what I myself actually have to say? Big thanks to Death Penalty for helping test this across all our forum skins, and for some quality feedback as well.

Source: SiliconEra, Kotaku

Final Fantasy XIV is coming. The closed beta is now winding down, and European and North American gamers will all be able to jump into the open beta sometime overnight between August 31 and September 1. That is, in fact, only five days and counting, so if you were bitter about folks that got into the closed beta but couldn't do much due to the limited hours and crashing, you need no longer be jealous. Also new is this brand new trailer, which is of course made of unfiltered pretty, but as befitting its upcoming open beta shows more gameplay than previous trailers (and breaks out lots of epic tunes to boot).

For those who have not been following, it appears that Final Fantasy XIV won't let you grind as if you're getting paid to do so rather than paying for the privilege. While, just like in Final Fantasy XI, you can change jobs fairly easily, you are going to be allotted only eight hours per week of full experience earning in each job, and only another seven hours per week of steadily-decreasing EXP. After fifteen hours in a job in a week, you will get no experience at all in that job. Naturally, this has caused an uproar among the hardcore MMO players, as their desire to play their game with every free waking minute might not be met by the new Final Fantasy. For me, though? It actually kind of makes me want to try the beta, and I've never said that about any MMO. The fewer hardcore players there are, the more I think I'd like it.

The launch date for PC is still tagged for the end of September worldwide, and for PlayStation 3 in March of 2011. No break yet on the impasse of bringing it to 360.

The Tokyo Game Show is now on the horizon since Gamescom is over, and it's time to start looking at what might crop up there for Square Enix. Mindjack will almost certainly be part of it, but it's hard to tell where the game is at, because some retailers are moving the North American release date out to January 2011. There could be a soccer title in the works, as Square Enix Europe has filed new trademarks for titles including "Manager," including "Championship Manager Legends." Dedicated soccer fans know that Championship Manager was once the premier soccer sim in the world, and that Eidos still holds that brand even though the original developers left to create the Football Manager games instead. Might only show at TGS if you can manage a J-League team, though. SaGa might appear, as Squenix have launched yet another of their famous teaser sites, this time with "SaGa" in the URL. I bet The 3rd Birthday will show up, too, as it's nearing release and getting lots of play over in Japan. And for Parasite Eve fans out there, andriasang reports that the success of The 3rd Birthday will dictate the future of the Parasite Eve franchise.

What probably won't be at TGS, though? Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Despite having seen more of it recently, Square Enix won't commit to launching the game anywhere in 2011. There might be some level of visibility at the show, but it probably won't be anything much more than we've seen previously. What could be taking so long, one must wonder - it's a single-platform game, after all. Perhaps Squenix are just spreading their employees too thin.

Final note for the day, and it's not Square but CoN. Over the years, I've prattled plenty about Alexa rankings, and how they mean nothing but are still fun when they show CoN climbing the ranks. Now, the folks at Nmap have created a side project around Alexa and site favicons (those little icons that show up next to the URL in your browser, or next to the bookmark you no doubt created for CoN long ago). The software they wrote grabbed the first 288,945 favicons starting at site number one, and then scaled them in size based on the site's popularity and inserted into a giant mosaic. Of course you have figured out by now that CoN is in that mosaic - search for it and you'll see! I will warn you, though, since naked ladies are a big part of how the internet works, you might find some icons in searching around that aren't safe for work. Search at your own risk!

A lot of architects refuse to put a thirteenth floor in their buildings. Thirteen's an unlucky number, remember? Forget that. CoN's had bad luck already in its days, and the fact that we are now celebrating our thirteenth birthday doesn't scare us one bit. Of course, we wouldn't mind doing what those architects do and skipping straight to fourteen, either, but we're full of integrity and can't pull that kind of shenanigan. So, here's a message to commemorate thirteen years, without a black cat or broken mirror to be found.

Normally I write these new-year messages a long way out and edit them for weeks. This year, on the event of CoN's thirteenth birthday, I didn't really have much time, due to the rest of my life making conspiracies against me. Isn't that the way it goes, though? I can see it in all of us, everyone that comes to the site. Things aren't quite the same as they used to be, as more of us have less time to spend around CoN. It makes our fixes slower, it makes our new work slower, and heck, it even makes the forums slower.

You know what's neat, though? We're still here, and we're still having a go of it. The site still brings in a lot of traffic. That means that even if the forums and chat seem a bit slower than they used to, it's not because people have given up on our version of the Final Fantasy universe - it's just that the game has changed and we all have to change with it.

Change is hard, man. I'm a guy who has lived in four different states in the last seven years, and worked in five. That said, we're all here reading this on a site that has looked the same for even longer, and even though we added a new game to our coverage just last year, along with the return of quizzes, you'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe CoN is afraid of change because it's too hard. The wild thing is that we don't. We lust for change, because we've got some ideas that we really love. Life's just a conspiracy, right? Our lives conspire against us bringing these ideas to fruition.

Here's my plan for next year. I've got coverage for two, maybe even three, games that I want to see revamped. We're working slowly on them now, and we want to work faster. We'll do our best. We've got some changes to the CoN backend that we think will give us more flexibility to continue improving the site in a more efficient manner. The current backend is as old as the Persona layout, and with that extra eight years of knowledge, we now know a lot of things we could do differently and better. We'd love to also make some improvements to such features as our fanart and news systems.

It probably sounds like a lot. It definitely sounds like a lot to a guy who not only makes websites all day, but also does freelance work and CoN both. I feel, though, that if I keep putting effort into the site, you folks will continue to visit. That's the pact between us, and it's held up quite well for the last thirteen years; there's no reason to think that it can't keep going a few more. As always, though, we're going to need your help, as CoN is a volunteer job for all of us - not one of us draws their living from working here. There's always little stuff that we can use, be it testing, or proofreading, or writing, or data entry. Additionally, I'd like to bring on some new staff to help spread the workload a bit, a tack that, if the right people are involved, will speed our progress. Here's what I'm looking at:

News Writer

A new News Writer would be beneficial to CoN in order to keep us up to date on RPG-related news that I too often miss in my reading, and to also help out by writing the Friday Square Enix Tidbits that regularly roll up recent small Square Enix news items. This person should be capable of producing with minimal supervision or nagging, and must be an excellent writer. Application would require some writing samples. Additionally, this user should be familiar with the most basic HTML, until such time as I make the submission tool a bit more user-friendly. Note that CoN also has tools to help you find news, meaning you don't necessarily have to read thirty gaming blogs to do well in this role.

Quiz Master

The Quiz Master would assist me in keeping the CoN quizzes stocked up every month. I know that every month, we release only 24 questions, but you'd be surprised with the preparation it takes. This new staff member would help build up our backlog of questions so that we don't ever run out; therefore, someone who is good with research and plays a lot of video games would be helpful here. Additionally, this person would use the tools that I built over a year ago to add new quizzes to the system; because of the toolkit, no database or coding experience is required.

Social Marketing Assistant

Eventually, important information from CoN, such as news, will be automatically posted to our Twitter and Facebook pages. However, to assist this automated process, or even serve in its stead, I'd like someone to help draw people in to CoN via other social media. It will involve posting tweets and statuses, as well as responding to tweets and comments that we get. It will also involve soliciting new traffic by tracking down new fanartists and fanfic authors to add to our libraries. Applicants must be familiar with various sites that can connect with CoN and how to use their basic features; these applicants must also be capable of writing professionally, as most of the output from this job will be read by users who might not already know CoN. It would be beneficial for this person to also participate in chat somewhat regularly to keep up to date with current work and that social aspect of CoN.

All of these jobs are important to the future of CoN, as we work to keep the site relevant as the games we cover become older and older. What's even better is that working for CoN does help your CV or resume - a good number of staff and former staff list their experience on CoN and have even used me as a professional reference down the road. With the job market still terrible right now, worldwide, perhaps you can spare a few hours a week to build up your own credentials with CoN too?

Whether you feel like applying or not (and there are probably a few of you that I will attempt to coerce into applying), there's something you can take away from this. I and my staff still feel a great deal of gratitude to you folks who keep coming to the site and chatting, posting to the forums, submitting creations, or even just using our guides. That gratitude keeps us here, keeps (some of) us working hard, and keeps me paying the bills. We still have no intention of stepping back, standing still, or going any direction but forward, regardless of speed. It might seem like the most boring amusement park attraction in the world right now, but stay on the ride. We guarantee good times if you want them.