News

Yeah, there was a lot of stuff at the Microsoft E3 press conference that will appeal to a LOT of people. I know this. Gears 3, Halo: Reach, Metal Gear, Crytek's new game... those are going to move a lot of copies. More power to all of you who want those games. For the core CoN audience, though, well, there wasn't all that much. The things I saw that were closest to RPGs were Fable III and possibly the Star Wars Kinect game if they include some good Knights of the Old Republic bits in there. (Don't forget, it was announced last night that Kinect is the real name for Natal.)

Other than that, though, not much for the Square-Enix fan to get excited over, I don't think. I think the best we could have hoped for was that Final Fantasy Versus XIII would break exclusivity the way that Final Fantasy XIII did, but there was no hide nor hair of Squenix anywhere to be seen. Not shocking, but still disappointing, no?

So, that said, feel free to discuss your favorite and least favorite bits of that conference. I'll circle back with mine in a moment since that's hardly front page news.

Nearly forgot, the best CoN user quote from this press conference has to go to Olly from chat. I had to clean it up a bit, because after all, it was from chat, but here's the paraphrase: "It's only a matter of time before there's an achievement for fondling yourself on Kinect for five or more people." Kudos, Olly, I guess.

As you've no doubt seen me mention for the past couple weeks, it's E3 time next week. The big show starts on Monday, 14 June, with some preliminary exhibitions and stuff, little one-off things and parties, in the days before. Last year, we talked about big chunks of the show by covering Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft at E3 2009 in our General Gaming forum. This year, though, I'd like to do things a bit differently, and that's where audience participation will come in.

We're still going to cover the big hitters, just like always, probably with our news posts at the end of each day. I know of a lot of you can't get the news right away live, though, and hate waiting for the end of the day. Because of that, we want to share cool stuff with you throughout the day. I know I'll be watching most of the events as they unfold, as will some of your fellow members either in chat, on Facebook or on Twitter. So, let's try something different. If you see something cool that you want to talk about right away, post it on one of those media. You can find us on chat, as always, at irc.darkmyst.org, where we'll probably be discussing things in a pretty freeform manner. Additionally, you can share your thoughts with us in real time on Facebook, by putting @Caves of Narshe in your status updates (if you're a fan) or posting on our wall, or you can do the same at Twitter by including @cavesofnarshe in your tweets. And, of course, you can always comment on our news threads as we post them, just like you have forever.

We know that some folks like to post at the forums, some like to chat, some like to tweet, or some combination of the aforementioned, et cetera. So this year, we're going to get our analysis of E3 not just from our own watching, but from yours. We'll include the best comments from all media into our news posts each day, and everyone can debate them at the forums as much as they like. If you're interested in commenting live with us, stop into chat, follow us on Twitter, or +Like the CoN fan page on Facebook now and get ready for the hot gaming news next week.

Short version: Come play at the CoN World Cup App.

Most of you have probably heard me blathering about the World Cup application in the forums, chat, or on Facebook for weeks. It's finally done and finally ready to start taking predictions, so it's time to get started!

I know the majority of readers out there are Americans, and therefore, you probably think that the only correct response is to hate soccer and anyone who calls it "football." This is why the rest of the world hates us. The World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world, and you're going to see a lot of us going crazy for it in the next month, starting next Friday, June 11 (but especially June 12; be there). That said, it's worth playing our game here at CoN so you can experience soccer, even a little bit, and it's easy.

Here's how it works, in a nutshell: you sign up, choose who you think will win the whole tournament, and then for every game played in the Cup (there are 64 total), you pick the scores of both teams, who wins, and who will score first. You get points based on how many of your picks you get right. "But I don't know these teams, and I definitely don't know the players," you say, in a whiny voice. "That's okay," I reply, "because we're willing to help you!" For this tournament, we're providing a random pick generator, so even if you know nothing but still want to play, you can click a button and the system will make a guess for you. I'm not going to guarantee that it will be a great guess, but you can play without knowing the first thing about soccer if you want.

To play, all you have to do is come to the CoN World Cup App, pick the overall champion, and then start making picks for individual matches. You can pick all of the first 48 right now, if you want, or pick them all individually. The remaining sixteen will become available as the teams are determined. Once you do that, you can sit back and watch each match to see how you did.

There is at least one prize in the offing, to be determined, and the top three players at the end all get forum awards to show off too. There will also be a thread to discuss the matches and brag about correct predictions, so you can remember to get your predictions in on time. And if you're still not convinced, here are a bunch of links to help you make your picks!

The FIFA Homepage
BBC Sport's World Cup Homepage
Wikipedia's World Cup 2010 Page
ESPN's World Cup Homepage
The last FIFA World Rankings before the WC
Oddsmakers' Odds

In 2050, I'll be seventy years old. At the rate I'm going, far too arthritic to even pick up a gamepad, let alone play Final Fantasy VII with it. Certainly too old to use PlayStation Move, I'm sure. However, that's the latest on the ongoing not-really-news saga of a FF7 remake; Wada-san claimed that it would take at least ten times longer in development as Final Fantasy XIII. That's probably a joke. But it certainly is another indicator that it just isn't going to happen.

Not-news aside, it's another fairly quiet week leading up to E3, and, more importantly, the World Cup. (Seriously, the WC is only every four years. You get E3 every summer.) The biggest news is probably that a large number of Final Fantasy XI accounts were compromised recently. Not a good time, either, since Squenix will no doubt be looking to convert a great many of their current user base to Final Fantasy XIV later this year.

For those looking for Final Fantasy XIII Versus, SiliconEra reports that it's in the queue behind new localizations (like the just-released Korean version) of Final Fantasy XIII and the release of Final Fantasy XIV. It appears that since Final Fantasy XIV is due out in 2010, Versus will be sometime in 2011 now. Does anyone else find it odd that the spinoff will come out after the sequel?

The DLC news of the week is around the new WiiWare game, "Kumanage," dropping in Japan next week. It's two games in one, a puzzle game and a active-battle game, both using the Wiimote for core gameplay mechanics. It is also filed under the category "cute," which I know will shock the readership, with it being a WiiWare game and all. No word yet on exactly when it might come across the ocean, but it has been rated already by both the US and the European ratings commissions, so something later this summer is not entirely unlikely.

Finally, the unneeded accessory of the week award goes to this external speaker and DS stand, shaped like a Slime. I'm all for big Slimes - let's be honest, the Slime is probably the most iconic monster design in RPGs. This just seems like a huge, useless pain in the butt, though, does it not?

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, AndriaSang

We're approaching the end of May, now, and things are getting exciting, not least due to the looming E3. There has been a lot of interesting news this week.

OK, I can't keep this one until the end of this news because it's so exciting. We now have a release date for Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, which will be arriving on October 5th in the US. Included in that link is a summary of the game's features and development process. One thing to note is that the game draws more inspiration from the classic NES games than from any of the newer games. Oh, and for some reason, it will retail for $5 cheaper than other similar DS games. However, that has only been confirmed for the US so far. With information like this, how can anyone here NOT be excited for the release date? To keep you entertained until then, why not go and buy Final Fantasy IX on PSN? Wait, what's that? It's been released in Europe and not the US? AHA AHA AHA AHA AHA A-

Ahem. Regardless, when it is available for everyone, I heavily recommend buying it. If none of the newer installments are doing it for you, this one will. Pretty sure I said something similar last time there was news about this, but my point still stands.

Square-Enix have been pretty prolific on the iPod/iPhone/iPad recently, what with the seventeeth incarnations of Final Fantasy I and II, and the brand new Chaos Rings, which was held in high regard by its reviewers. With this stream of successes, it's only natural they'd start releasing more games on the system. And so, now I present to you, Chocobo Panic, for $3.99!! It's an exciting game that sees you catch Chocobos on your iPad! Yeah. Awesome. Well, if anything, this game gives me hope that Square-Enix are putting out all of their sub-par games prior to E3 so they can focus on the good stuff. Not that I have anything against Chocobo Panic.. I'm sure it's...you know... great.

Speaking of new games, it seems yet another new RPG is being developed, with Supreme Commander producer Dave Hoffman at the head. This announcement was made via his twitter, which irks me mainly because he didn't start the sentence with a capital letter. REGARDLESS, hopefully E3 will shed some light on this "latest and greatest RPG to come outta Square Enix". If nothing else, at least one person in the company will be irritated if the game doesn't have a decent storyline. Miwa Shoda, writer of Final Fantasy XII and Legend of Mana, believes that all RPGs need a compelling story to keep players interested. I think everyone here can agree. But I can't say the FFXII story did much for me, so maybe she could do some improvements of her own (and I mean that in the nicest way possible).

Well, it's time for me to climb back into my CoNwork cage. R51 lets me out to do news when he isn't here.

Source: 1Up, Kotaku, SiliconEra

After another brief dry spell in good Square Enix news, we're back with the Friday Tidbits again. I feel pretty confident that we're only a couple weeks away from a new blast of delicious news, though, as E3 is nearly upon us; the official conference starts on June 14, which is problematic given that this is also the first full week of the World Cup. Jerks. In this issue, we have news about how Squenix is a very healthy company, new info about the Western release of Birth By Sleep, some screenshots from the Final Fantasy XIV alpha release, a Squenix world record, some news not news about Final Fantasy Versus XIII (which still exists!), and a few other scattered release dates.

First off, if you might have been worried about Square Enix staying afloat with the mixed reviews of their in-house games, well, don't be. At the rate they're going, they'll have money to produce Final Fantasies up through XCVI, at least. Their top five games of their last fiscal year all sold over a million copies each for their year ending in April 2010, with three of them selling over three million apiece worldwide. That's not a low number of games, kids, and only one of them was not a Squenix IP.

Birth By Sleep, the newest Kingdom Hearts game is still coming, and now it's dated. It's coming September 7 (September 10 in Europe), and it is going to pack some high profile voice work, including Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill. If those two names don't pique your interest, how about James Woods? At the very least, that should appeal to hardcore Family Guy fans, right? If you're a KH fan without a PSP, Sony's even going to give you a $200 silver PSP bundle with the game, a nice big Memory Stick, and an unnamed movie. And it's not a PSP Go, so there's nothing to lose!

Everyone who got into the Final Fantasy XIV alpha is under a non-disclosure agreement. That means you're probably not going to get much info unless you know someone who really, really trusts you - however, Square Enix themselves released some screenshots this week. Might not be the most interesting information to come out about the game, but it's what you're going to get probably until at least E3.

Finally, you might have heard that our buddy Yoichi Wada stick his foot into it a bit this week, saying that the PlayStation 3-exclusive Final Fantasy Versus XIII might be on the table for a multiplatform release. Of course, since then, there's been some (probably Sony-suggested) spin that the initial statement doesn't necessarily mean anything at all. Since there's no release date for the game yet, it's hard to say right now one way or another. I doubt anything will come from it at E3, but Tokyo Game Show is a possibility.

Wrapping up, enjoy a couple more release dates. Siliconera has some release info you might have missed: the Japanese megahit Dragon Quest IX will be in North America on July 11th, with DLC to follow; The Four Heroes of Light, meanwhile, has been rated in Australia which means an English-language release is pending, and will almost certainly be popping up in Europe and North America sooner rather than later.

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, AndriaSang