News

Those of you who follow our affiliates, or have even come to join us from one of them, should take note of two changes to the list effective today.

First, we've added a new affiliate, FF Spirit. FF Spirit came to us seeking affiliation last week, and we're proud to say that we've accepted them. Their site is attractive and nicely built, and though their webmaster has a nick from FF8, we won't hold that against them.

Also, now that Corda is back on board, we have re-added Fierce Legends back into the mix. FLS is now hosted on the CoN server, so spreading the word that they are back is great publicity for both FLS and your favorite FF site. (CoN, in case you weren't sure.)

Let's welcome these two sites into our fold!

Officials at Nintendo have reinforced all of their previous statements concerning the company's future in the home console market. Nintendo will unveil the successor to the GameCube at E3 2005.

Yoshihiro Mori, Nintendo's Senior Managing Director, was quoted,"[We] plan to unveil the next-generation console [that will be] succeeding the GameCube at next year's E3 during the spring." Mori continued, "This won't be a continuation, but rather something entirely different."

The console will be worked on under the codename "Revolution."

Source: Games_Are_Fun

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It's good to see that Nintendo is not letting any doubt enter into the question of whether or not it will continue to stick it out in the home console market. Sadly, it appears from Mori's second quote that this "Revolution" will not be backwards compatible with the GameCube. That's just speculation though. Hopefully, it is wrong as backwards compatibility was one the PS2's strongest selling points for me.

In what looks to be a record for us at the Caves of Narshe for the most fanfics up in one week, we have another fanfic up in the Final Fantasy VI section. It's called But... I Don't Have the Answer, and is written by forum member Djibriel.

This fanfiction takes place after the end of the game, but isn't your typical after-death fanfic. It focuses on Terra for the latter part, and is a very interesting look at what humanity is dangerously close to ending up as.

Our FF6 Fanfiction section has yet again grown, with a new addition called The Essence of Mimicry.

This gem is by forum member Mr Thou, and is about Daryl and her encounter with the being that is Gogo. It's an excellent fanfic with a great ending to it.

Those of you who frequent the Site Submissions section of the forums may have already noticed, and read, Zephir's recent FF4 fanfic, titled "A Day in the Lives..." If not, you can check out our FF4 Fanfiction Section to read this story for yourself.

It deals with Palom and Porom, and is very amusing.

More fanfiction will be going up in the near future, for various authors.

Sammy, the Japanese gaming that tried to merge with Sega last year and already owned around 25% of the company's stock, has bought out the rest of Sega outright for $1.45 billion. The combined will be known as Sega Sammy Holdings.

The company will have a strong presence in all areas of gaming entertainment: console gaming, pachinko, "pachislot" (pachinko/slot machines), amusement, arcade games, and the content services market. Sammy, in fact, is the largest Pachinko machine manufacturer in the world. There are plans to have the company organized into four main divisions by 2007: pachinko and pachislot, amusement and consumer games, media content and network, and miscellaneous. Until that time, Sega and Sammy will continue to run as if separate companies. Sammy's financial strength and Sega's creativity will be the key to the whole company as it predicts an income of $4.4 billion for the fiscal year of 2005


Source: Gamespot

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Hopefully, Sammy will not pull Sega out of the console market. I don't have the exact quote at the moment, but I remember that around the time of the attempted merger last year that one of the high executives of Sammy said that Sega needed "to focus on the arcade market more than home console market."

On the other hand, Sammy's financial strength may allow Sega to devote more resources to their console games than they have been able to as of late.