News

While shaken as a nation, quite well battered as individuals, Japan and specifically Square Enix are not about to give up and walk away. Even in the midst of disaster, the company is sending news out worldwide for gamers, with more to come in the following weeks. Here's what is up right now for the gaming megalith.

The best-selling Dragon Quest game of all time, DQIX, managed to move 5.3 million units worldwide as of the end of December of last year; that's nearly ten percent of the sum of all Dragon Quest sales, which I suppose makes sense, given that there have been almost ten of them (some with a few re-releases, of course). It's the first game in the series to cross the 5 million mark, though, and one has to compare that with the massive 9.8 million number of Final Fantasy VII for a benchmark.

In other news from the Enix side of the house, it appears that the sequel to the game released as Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime in the west will be coming for the Nintendo 3DS. There's no annoucement for the US or Europe as yet, but it looks like it will be coming to Japan before the end of this year. It's going to have a lot of action at sea, a change of pace from the tank battles of the second game (the one we got here).

The demo for Duodecim is out in North America this week; hilariously, the demo for Europe was also announced - two days before the launch of the full game. Enjoy!

If you've been interested in Final Fantasy Type-0 since the last time we talked about it, we hope to have more news next week. According to andriasang, Famitsu will have a new preview in their issue next Thursday. If the translators get to work, we could have some new info in time for tidbits next week. Wouldn't that be lovely? I missed this somewhere along the way, but it looks like there might be a playing card theme to the names of many of the twelve main characters: Rem, Machina, Cinque, Seven, Trey, Eight, Nine, Jack, and Queen.

Finally for this week, if you're a Canadian looking for work, Squenix might have something for you next year. Eidos Montreal, home of the new Deus Ex, is still in play, but apparently the company is in talks with several provinces for a new studio in the Great White North. Way too early to know what games the company might be thinking for this new location.

Source: andriasang, Joystiq

In the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that caused horrendous damage and loss of life in Japan not yet a week ago, there have been a number of game companies who, even with their own ability to work and earn money curtailed, have picked up the mantle to donate funds to the relief effort. Level-5, Konami, Capcom, Nintendo, Namco Bandai, this list goes on and on, and as of today it now includes Square Enix, who are throwing 100 million yen of their own into the effort (for the rest of us, that means a little over 1.25 million American dollars, or just over 900,000 Euros).

Have you been wanting to donate money to the cause of rescuing Japan from the aftereffects of this quake? I know Japan has a special place in many of our hearts as video gamers, so I can't blame you for it. If so, maybe you should take a look at Siliconera, who are hosting a raffle with a Cecil Harvey Dissidia figure and some other assorted swag, with all proceeds from the raffle going to the Red Cross for disaster relief in Japan. Alternatively, you can also visit Google's donation page and donate directly.

Source: andriasang, Siliconera, Google

It was just a couple weeks ago that we found out about Final Fantasy III for iOS devices. Well, okay, the CoN News Team missed it entirely, but member Aeris-Logan did not. For those who have missed it, the Final Fantasy III release for Apple hardware will be a port of the Nintendo DS version, altered obviously to allow the use of a single touch screen without control pad.

Things have been moving fast since then, though; not only is the game going to drop in March (and March is over one-third over already!), it's going to get a simultaneous worldwide release on iTunes in eight languages. In addition to the obvious Japanese and English, players who read French, Italian, German, Spanish, or two variants of Chinese will get a localized version as well - that's significant effort going into this release.

The final release date hasn't been announced, and iTunes does things on its own schedule anyway. Pricing isn't out yet either, but other similar Squenix games on the service sit at $8.99 in the United States, even older games. Expect that price or your local equivalent.

Source: Siliconera

Because I've missed a couple Fridays, here's an off-schedule Tidbits post of Square Enix news to cover the gap for a bit.

In case you missed the last post, there are big releases for PSP coming from the Final Fantasy franchise very soon. Over the past couple weeks, the company has had a media blowout to share new shinies with the gaming public from both Final Fantasy IV Collection and Dissidia Duodecim. These probably aren't new to the fans who most eagerly await these two releases, but if you're still on the fence or don't have a PSP... well, you're probably not reading this thread, are you? Okay, in that case, it's just for those of you who might be bored.

Here's a list of the new stuff by game:

• Final Fantasy IV Collection
  • New trailer with "Interlude" content bridging the two games
  • Screenshots from andriasang
• Dissidia Duodecim
  • More screenshots from andriasang
  • Low-quality video of the new Desperado Chaos character

Additionally involving both Dissidia and FFIV Collection is the detail released last week regarding some free DLC for Dissidia. Some of it is free to all from the Playstation Store, two new costumes for Cecil can be gotten for free with purchase of Collection, and the last is just for people who belong to the Mobile Square Enix site, which will bring some free new music into the game. All of these promotions are obviously just for the Japanese Dissidia players; does anyone know from other sources or from the treatment of the first game if similar promotions will run here in the West?

Finally, a bit of bolt-on news, unrelated to the PSP; Square Enix tweeted today that they have another new Facebook game in the works. This one will be set in Japan and will center around some sort of group of fairies. I'm trusting someone else's translation, here, possibly to my chagrin. I think that previous Square Enix Facebook games have been modestly successful, though, so whatever's good for the company, why not go for it?

Source: andriasang

Final Fantasy VI is on the way to yet another release, but it's still not the rumored 3D remake for the Nintendo 3DS. As close as you're getting now is the Wii, and Japan is as close as it is getting to Western gamers, at least for now.

Coming sometime in March, Final Fantasy VI will cost 900 Wii Points, a little higher than the standard cost for Super Famicom games. Like other VC games, this will be a largely-untweaked port of the original SFam/SNES release. There's no word yet whether it will get the same treatment for the West, though I wouldn't be shocked to see it over here quite soon.

Who knows, perhaps it will have some bearing on that FF6 remake that so many people want to see on the new Nintendo portable. If you have a Wii and under ten bucks to drop, maybe give it a go if and when it gets here, eh?

Source: andriasang

Dissidia 012: Duodecim is set to be released quite soon; March 3 in Japan, March 22 in North America, and March 25 in Europe. In recognition, Squenix is holding a launch event - and it will be streamed on the internet. I hope you speak Japanese, though, because it will be in Japanese and the site it's being streamed on is NicoNico Live - a Japanese video site. You'll need to make an account on NNL if you want to watch it, so, again, I hope you speak Japanese.

The event is to release information about the game, show how the competitions will work, and star some "special guests". Whether or not they'll be announcing new characters or just giving information on ones they've already announced remains to be seen.

Actually, I've never played Dissidia. To me, Final Fantasy is an RPG series, not a fighting game series, and I don't do fighting games too much. But I know a lot of people like it, and it is always exciting when anything new that's Final Fantasy-related is released.

Source: Final Fantasy Union