News

Advent Children has been given an official Japanese release date of September 14, 2005. Tetsuya Nomura, director of the Final Fantasy VII digitally animated movie sequel, announced the date and promised that the movie will experience no further delays. US release is expected to closely follow that of Japan.

According to previous announcements from Sony Computer Entertainment, Advent Children will be available in DVD and the Sony-PSP-friendly "UMD" formats. It will carry a price tag of 4,800 yen ($44-$48) in Japan. No word has yet been given on a US price tag.

This will be Tetsuya Nomura's first feature-length film, though he has long been affiliated with Square Enix and the Final Fantasy series. Nomura has worked on character design and graphics for such games as Final Fantasy X and Chrono Trigger, as well as the original Final Fantasy VII.

Further information may be found at Square Enix's Official Advent Children Site and the unofficial AdventChildren.net.

Square Enix announced Saturday that it would be offering original Final Fantasy soundtracks for download via iTunes.

Soundtracks for all eleven numbered Final Fantasy games, from I to XI, are represented, as well as a few other series-related albums, such as a live recording of the 2002 FF-themed concert put on by the Tokyo Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. This marks the first time any of these albums have been available in the United States.

A complete listing of Final Fantasy soundtracks now available on iTunes can be found at Square Enix's Official Website.

Tiddles and I have been in the process of moving CoN to a new box for the past week or so. We think the thing is just about ready to go, so we're going to fieldtest it by directing traffic to it starting tomorrow. We're planning on porting the DNS over early tomorrow morning on the American east coast, but that's contingent on me waking up, really.

Those of you who have been with us for a while are probably have a vague recollection of the routine. But here's how it will go.

• We will first close the forums.
• We will back up an absolutely current database for the forums, and copy that database to the new machine.
• We will open the forums on the new machine.
• We will move the DNS entry for cavesofnarshe.com to point to the new server.

Now, this is technobabble to most, but what it boils down to is this: for a while, the forums will be closed. They will appear to reopen for different people at different times, due to differences in ISPs updating their data. Everyone, assuming all goes well, should be back in no later than Monday morning EDT.

So, there's not much to discuss here, so just let me know if you need clarification on this move or if you want anything explained. It makes me feel like less a nerd if someone actually wants to know more.

I normally don't use news to draw attention to site polls on the main site, but in this case I'd like to. Please visit any page of the content area of the site, and vote on the poll regarding Adopt a Chocobo. We're reconsidering its place and future with CoN, and we'd like your input. Thank you.

Square Enix released a new design for its company website at www.square-enix.com on Friday, April 15.

The new site combines all of Square Enix's previous sites (for North America, Europe, and Japan) into a single domain name, and incorporates a sleek new flash design to improve continuity among each language's section of the site.

As stated at The Register (much thanks to Iceman for linking us to the article), Sony and Microsoft will be presenting their new consoles, respectively the PS3 and XBox2, on May 16th.

Sure fact? Well, not exactly, as none of the companies said why they would want to make a press conference, but the fact that the E3 starts the very next day hints towards that direction. The real deal is probably when the two consoles will be available for sales: Christmas, early 2006...? Nonetheless, the E3 will probably emphasizes a lot on the two new consoles, which would make it an interesting event.