News

Theatrhythm: Curtain Call was released in Japan about a month ago, and is coming to the West later this year (no specifics on the date just yet). Square Enix, though, has confirmed the list of 127 new songs we'll see for the sequel, with 109 being part of the initial game purchase. In addition, every song but one from the original game, both on-cart and DLC, will also be available to Curtain Call.

The most interesting thing about this news is that the game will be branching out beyond the core numbered series this time around. Final Fantasy Tactics, Mystic Quest, Crisis Core, Advent Children, SaGa, Dissidia, and even more Square games will have available tracks at launch - of course, even more games and tracks are likely to appear down the road as future DLC.

Check out the full list below and let us know what you think is missing in the comments.

Source: Kotaku

It's been a while since I did a Distant Worlds update - I suspect it's because I'm still a little bitter for not pulling the trigger and going myself last October! The concert series well known by Final Fantasy fans worldwide has some new information to share this month, though, and some of the news is sure to be particularly interesting to CoN readers.

There are three Distant Worlds concerts on the books for this year at the moment; for our South American readers, two dates in Chile are scheduled for May 31 and June 1 in Rancagua and Santiago respectively.

On August 24, a special performance will take place in Chicago, a favorite destination for the Distant Worlds crowd - not only will Arnie Roth and Nobuo Uematsu be in attendance, they will also be performing solos during the set, and the setlist will focus on Final Fantasy VI in honor of its 20th anniversary. Dancing Mad, the Opera, and a never-heard arrangement of character themes are confirmed to be part of the new setlist.

The final date for 2014 at the moment returns to Toronto, with a performance at the Sony Centre. Roth and Uematsu will attend this show as well, though they won't perform and the setlist apparently will be more typical than the FF6-centric one in Chicago a few months earlier.

The new spinoff of Distant Worlds will debut this weekend, though, also in Chicagoland. It's called A New World, and it will be performed in smaller venues and conventions with a thirteen-member ensemble. In all the performances scheduled so far, both Arnie Roth and Nobuo Uematsu will be in attendance and will perform as well, with Roth on violin and Uematsu on keyboard. The series starts this Friday at Anime Central in Rosemont, IL, with a 4pm show on the 16th and a 1pm matinee on the 17th. After that, the show moves to Omaha for two shows on this Sunday, the 18th of May, and a pair of Montreal shows in August. All arrangements will be new to suit the new ensemble, so even folks who have seen Distant Worlds will get to experience something new.

If you line up a visit to any of these shows, make sure to give us a report after!

Source: Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds, Final Fantasy: A New World

As of now, there's a listing on Steam for Final Fantasy III. One might cock his or her eyebrow a bit at this news, but it's kind of a big deal. Kotaku reports that the game appears to be a port of the PSP version, and the screenshots look as if they've done some up-res work to polish the visuals. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the screenshots look absolutely lovely and that this bodes well for the care they plan to take with this port overall.

Being on Steam, the game will also get an achievement system laid into the gameplay, and will have Steam Cloud support for cloud storage of saved games and user settings for portability. The listing also advertises controller support, which seems like a no-brainer but will certainly improve the game's playability.

There's no release date and no price point yet, but it seems reasonable to think that a realm of $20.00 or so could be the target, with the less-advanced ports of Final Fantasy VII and VIII listing at $13.00 right now. This game's release could even be a precursor to a release of Final Fantasy IV 3D, given that the DS version was developed by the same team as III; additionally, both games have had similar iOS and Android releases that would likely make a port to Windows easier. Like I said, this could be pretty big news for fans of classic and less-exposed Final Fantasy games!

Source: Kotaku, Steam

We're making a slight change from our usual game-focussed news postings today to give you a brief nugget about Sony and Square Enix finances. Wall Street Journal, eat your heart out:

Sony has announced that it has sold all of its 9.52 million shares in Square Enix to SMBC Nikko Securities, in a deal reportedly worth ¥15.3 billion. That's approximately $150 million, or £89 million. Sony has not given a reason for the sale; but it's reasonable to assume that this has been done as part of Sony's current financially-motivated reforms, which also include plans to sell off the VAIO computing arm and restructure its TV division. Sony hasn't been faring well recently, financially speaking, and the boost this deal will give to its fiscal report will probably please its shareholders.

There's no indication as yet that this will have any impact on Square Enix's output or the release platforms of its games. Sony's previous 8.25% stake didn't prevent games such as Final Fantasy XIII being released on rival platforms, so it's unlikely that PlayStation platforms will be losing out now either.


Source: Eurogamer, Forbes

Leading off, Final Fantasy XIV beta phase 2 is now live for PlayStation 4 gamers. Folks who participate in the beta can carry over their characters when the official release happens this week - I would have given you more notice but I just now realized that I never actually posted this news I drafted five days ago!

If you preorder the game via the Square Enix store, and despite my delay in posting, there's still time, you'll get a screenprinted fabric poster, early access to the post-beta launch, and two items: a Cait Sith Doll minion, and a Moogle cap for your character (complete with head-pom!).

Final Fantasy X and X-2 HD Remasters were released last week in the West. Check out this huge wall-o-art that the company displayed in Gallery Nucleus and put up for auction for charity for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan; all told, the auction raised well over fifteen thousand dollars.

Here are some pre-packaged tidbits to wrap up this midweek edition, too, courtesy of Famitsu via siliconera. Fairly interesting stuff, as well; for one, Squenix took pains to deny that there was a third game in the Final Fantasy X universe in the works. This is the first I'd even heard of that rumor - anyone else? It seems odd that such a rumor could remain under the radar that well but still solicit a denial from the company. A third Dissidia game is on the wishlist of that series' director, Mitsunori Takahashi, and producer Shinji Hashimoto explained that the upcoming releases of Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD Remix were moving along as desired. Apparently there are more nuggets coming that Famitsu are not making public until the new issue hits the newsstands, so there could be more updates and details soon.

Source: Twitter, siliconera

The sequel to 2012's Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, subtitled "Curtain Call," is set for release this year for the Nintendo 3DS (April 24 in Japan, in fact). The information about the game is flowing freely now, though, as one would expect from an iteration on a music game. Most of the new content for the game comes in the form of the tracks available, and earlier this week Square Enix announced a big chunk of the tracklist from the first seven games of the series. There are some big names in there, from "Matoya's Cave" to "Golbez, Clad in Darkness" to "Clash on the Big Bridge" to "Dancing Mad" to "J-E-N-O-V-A" (and that's not even ten percent of the track list already announced).

The new version of the game also contains a new mode, "Versus," which takes the core gameplay and applies it to a head-to-head competition in which players compete for best score and also build up debuffs to throw at the other side as handicaps. The other gametype added to Theatrhythm for iOS, "Quest Medley," mode returns as well with some enhancements; on top of that, new characters will be present (some from Type-0), and better sorting and favoriting mechanisms will apply to the growing tracklist. The game's even getting a Crystarium!

The 2.2 patch for Final Fantasy XIV is planned for release on March 27, and as befitting a patch, it will be adding a fair amount of new content. New battles will be added in the patch with Leviathan and Gilgamesh, as well as adding new Beast Tribes and towns. This patch should come in advance of the PlayStation 4 release of the game, which, if bought in the Collector's Edition, will include a Fat Chocobo mount. Look at that goofy thing!

To wrap up with Squenix merch news, check out these goodies. The Play Arts division, responsible for all of the action figures and similar toys produced by the company, is rolling out a lot of new figures at various price points. At the high end, in the plus-$100 range, you can find massive Bahamut, Hero of Light, and Dragoon figures. The Hero of Light and Dragoon figures look a lot like the original Amano arts that were used in the logos for Final Fantasy I and IV respectively, so it's possible that this line could grow to include other similar figures in the theme. Perhaps we could have a Magitek Knight? Please?

The Static Arts line is known for less expensive figures; coming soon to that line are a series of figures modeled after the Monster Octopus design language. The first three of these figures, Cloud, Sephiroth and Tifa, are available now for pre-order. They're pretty reasonably priced, at $30 for five-inch-tall figures - okay, that doesn't seem reasonable, but compared to other collectible figures of similar size, they're not bad.

In the long tradition of Piano Collections albums, which have been released for lots of games in the series, there will also soon be a Piano Opera collection for Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX. Piano Operas are single-disc, multi-game albums with a selection of piano arrangements for each game; while the first six games (divided by platform) got albums back in 2012, 2014 will be the release date for the new compilation.