News

Service for Square's newest addition to the FF series, Final Fantasy XI, began yesterday in North America.

For those not familiar with the title, Final Fantasy XI is Square's first Massively Multiplayer Online RPG (MMORPG) release. The game offers players a myriad of gameplay experiences, from customizable characters to multiple platform support.
Character customization includes race, gender, and job class. Available races include Hume, Elvaan, Tarutaru, Galka, and Mithra. Fifteen job classes have been released on the Official FFXI website (including Final Fantasy classics like White Mage, Black Mage, and Thief), along with allusions that other jobs may exist as well.
FFXI has currently been released on both Windows and PS2. Players on both platforms can play and interact on the same realms; additionally, realms are international, allowing players from different nations to team up to complete quests. Also, Square has included an automatic in-game translation system for common phrases to help facilitate international gameplay.

More can be read at Square's recently revamped FFXI site, The Final Fantasy XI Van'Diel Journal

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Hype about the game's release seems high among Caves of Narshe members. In a recent poll on the website, over two thirds of the 201 responding members said they would purchase the game for one of the available platforms. Complete poll results are below:

Thinking about getting Final Fantasy 11?

25.4% - I'll buy it for PS2
34.8% - I'll but it for PC
6.5% - I'll buy it, but I don't know for which platform
16.4% - I'll try it before making a decision
16.9% - It's not for me

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Admittedly, I'm a little skeptical about the game.
After hearing about the major server problems upon initial release in Japan, and after witnessing first-hand the endless shelves of unsold FFXI copies in Japanese gaming stores, I can't help but wonder if the game will really work out to be everything Square's said it will be...

Sony announced today that it would be cutting 20,000 jobs worldwide. The 20,000 jobs constitue 13 percent of the company's total employees. It is not certain where the jobs will be cut, but it is known that the first 7,000 will be from Japan.

Poor sales of the Playstation 2 and Trinitron TV sets are being blamed for contributing to Sony's declining revenue and its thus needed restructuring.

Source: Gamestop

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It's never good to hear about job cuts. Hopfully, those who are getting layed off will find new employers quickly.

As you've already seen if you've read this CoN news article on the healing potential of video games, we have hired Phoenix as a new News Editor. Phoenix will be the third news staffer, working in conjunction with Administrator Elena99 and Moderator SSJ_Cloud.

Phoenix, as noted in his staff biography, is currently a freshman in Uni, having finished high school early. He has a good writing style, has been willing to help whenever possible in the months since his return to the site, and is an all-around good guy.

Everyone, please join me and the staff in welcoming Phoenix to his new position at Caves of Narshe. We're all looking forward to working more directly with him!

Common video games have the potential to treat and cure phobias, according to a study published in the CyberPsychology and Behavior Journal on October 17.

The study was conducted in Quebec, Canada at the Universite du Quebec en Outaouais. It involved several patients diagnosed with phobias, each treated through exposure therapy.

(Exposure therapy utilizes gradual exposure to a fear. For example, an arachnophobe undergoing exposure therapy might initially be seated in a room with a tarantula at the room’s opposite end; as the patient became more comfortable with the spider’s presence, the therapist would move the spider closer and closer to the patient until finally, the patient would ideally be able to sit next to or hold the spider in his or her hand without fear. Early exposure therapy often involves virtual reality equipment.)

One test group in the study received their initial treatment via expensive virtual reality equipment commonly used for exposure therapy in medical labs, while another test group began their treatment through use of inexpensive, low-end personal computers, head-mounted displays, and common first-person video game software, such as Half-Life and Unreal Tournament.

Surprisingly, the study indicated that PCs running video game software produced similar therapeutic results in patients to the standard medical equipment.

The full study can be read at Ingenta Select.

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I’m glad to see this bit of news; video games don’t get enough credit for their potential uses and benefits, in my opinion.
For one thing, I believe they can teach young kids all kinds of useful things. I’m quite convinced that Final Fantasy VI supported my basic math skills in elementary school and first taught me how to spell "ghost," for example. I also distinctly remember looking up the word "maintain" in the family dictionary because of that game. (Yet I still don’t know exactly how that dang Dispel thing works.)
So, it’s nice to read about a concrete scientific study being performed and indicating practical benefits of video game software.

Gamestop and Electronics are offering a $100 dollar rebate on Nokia's handheld unit until November 2nd.

The rebate is an instant one, not mail-in as well. Because of this, it is not known whether Nokia is behind this price cut, or if it is the two retailers trying to unload their massive inventories. Interestingly, the N-Gage rebate is not mentioned on the official N-Gage website If it is mentioned, it is very well hidden. This tends to point to the latter that pushed for the cut.

Is the N-Gage heading the way of the Jaguar?

Source: Gamespot

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This is still not enough to save the system in my eyes. One can still get both a Gameboy SP AND a Gamecube for that price. This is just a company and some retailers trying to spare what little they can of their investment before it becomes another E.T. from the Atari 2600 age.

Sony has announced that their profits for this quarter will be about 25% lower than initially projected.

There are two main reasons for this. The first is the relative strength of the Yen right now when compared to the currencies of other nations. Since Sony exports so many products, they do not receive as much of a profit as they should because of these nations' weaker currencies (This is just a quick and dirty explanation of it. I'm just a history major so I know almost nothing about global economics). The second reason is Playstation 2 sales are starting to slow. Europe is the only major market were sales are continuing to grow. Last year for this quarter, Sony's game division had sales of 250 billion Yen. For the quarter this year, the division has only had sales of 161 billion Yen. Sony contributes part of this to a dock worker strike on the US West Coast.

Source: Games_Are_Fun

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I wonder if PS3 news will start picking up because of this...