News

Following up on some news we posted back in December, FFV has been confirmed for release on iOS devices on March 28th. We don't know yet which other Final Fantasies will be joining it, but with this latest addition to the Square Enix iOS lineup ready to hit the shelves - the electronic ones, that is - we'll probably be hearing more sometime in the not-so-distant future. This version is a port of FFV Advance, which means it will be completely covered by our own shiny, revamped FFV section!

The bigger news according to internet consensus is the Japanese price, leaked from a magazine scan: the equivalent of $19. Everyone with a keyboard and upwards of three brain cells seems to have decried the cost in the last 48 hours. What do you think? Is $19 unfair to ask for a game that is, after all, just a port of a previous version, and whose original is now twenty years old? Or is it appropriate for a game that will take 40-ish hours to complete, well above your average mobile app, and which still sells on the GBA for at least 50% higher? IF U DONT AGREE WITH ME, YOUR DUM.

Source: Kotaku

A lot of people have been looking for news of the Final Fantasy X HD remake since it was first announced, and those details have been slow in coming. Now, we might know part of the reason why: it's not just X, but also Final Fantasy X-2 that will see the upgrade.

When released for PS3, both games will be on the same Blu-ray disc; for Vita, they'll be separate purchases on separate game cards. There's no pricing and no lockdown release date, though next week's Jump magazine confirms that a 2013 release in Japan is the target.

Both games will be based on the International Edition releases, which is extra grand for X-2 as that version was never released in the West before.

Source: Siliconera

Well behind the curve, as we do, we're releasing today the first ever Caves of Narshe Podcast called - of course - the CoNcast. We'd been kicking around the idea of a podcast for a long time off and on, and when laszlow suggested it to me again a couple weeks back, it all started to click. At that point, we started having some larger discussions around the format and the participants, and within a matter of a few days we had an outline set up. A few days later, and we had recording done. A few days after that, and we're at now. Publishing our first CoNcast.

I'm calling this the first CoNcast. I'm hoping it's not the last. We're going to see what kind of feedback we get and go from there. We're aiming to create something here that is very much like CoN, particularly CoNchat - it's about Final Fantasy, but it's not about Final Fantasy. It's about the kind of stuff that Final Fantasy fans like, whether it's the canon series, or other games, or gaming, or music that reminds you of gaming, or... stuff. So... you like... stuff?

This episode's a bit long, I'll admit. We start off with Tiddles and me, and a bit of an explanation as to who we are and why we're doing this podcast now, and not, say, five years ago (and not five years hence, for what it's worth!). If you're not particularly interested in that, no worries. You can skip ahead to about fourteen minutes and get into the main topics of this episode, which loop in also Death Penalty and laszlow and include a discussion of fansites and their future, and also some discussion of PAX East, which is coming up this weekend and for which I'll be in attendance on the last day. That's going to be our overall goal, though I'm sure we'll deviate repeatedly - we want to talk about a topic that is of interest to our overall base, and we want to talk about something that's current-ish. There will also be some mockery, and some snide comments, and some abuse of Squenix and also some defense of Squenix, and maybe not exactly where you expect it.

We're going to look to try a second episode next week and if there's interest, put them out every two weeks or so. We'd love to get feedback and suggestions of new topics to cover, too. Once we get a few episodes under our belt, we'll have a feed available so that you can be easily notified of new episodes. We really had fun putting this together, so we hope you like it too so we can keep trying them!

First off, news that's actually been around since earlier int he month. A twitter message from the official account for the game Bravely Default: Flying Fairy has renewed fans' hopes that the title will be brought west. The 3DS RPG, which received both critical praise and respectable sales in Japan, has been out since last October but with no announcement of plans to release outside the island. While the English text of the twitter message is about as perplexing as its title, the Japanese text amounts to "The voices from those folks aboard are definitely getting through!" Fingers crossed.

In somewhat more official news, it's been made known that Wii U beta testing for Dragon Question X is now underway, with the game set to go on sale for that console at the end of the month. The Wii U version features of graphics upgrade, but is still compatible with its original Wii incarnation.

Saving the coolest for last, it looks A Realm Reborn: Final Fantasy XIV will be getting a new mount some time in the future, and one which should be well familiar to any regulars of CoN: Magitek Armor! Check out the first source link; it's from the official FFXIV developer blog. The design is still a ways from play-worthy, but I think you'll all agree that it's pretty slick.

Source: FFXIV Blog, Siliconera, Kotaku

With the beta kicking off, Square Enix released new content yesterday with regards to A Realm Reborn in the form of two new in-game videos and the application benchmark tool.

The videos are both in-game (for the beta, of course). One details a "tour" of several of the game's areas on both Windows and PlayStation 3, in which the environments all look lovely and the battles and events dynamic. Not sure if it's the video or the engine, but the PS3 scenes look to be a bit less fluid and more jittery. I'd assume that the PS3 version hasn't been quite as optimized as Windows as yet.

The second video is a developer's commentary (in Japanese, with some subtitles) in which the use of a gamepad to play is described. Since PS3 and PC users will all coexist in-game, it's important that the use of a gamepad to play the game is as functional and easy as with keyboard and mouse. To that end, it appears that the PS3 (and who knows, maybe 4?) gamepad will have at least three full sets of functionality available to the d-pad and face buttons, toggled on and off by tapping the left and right triggers. The default sets will also be customizable.

In case you've never done a benchmark before, Final Fantasy XIV's is specifically meant to see how your PC would do trying to run the game. Essentially, it tests your system to see its performance and to suggest to you if you need an upgrade of any kind before trying and/or buying the game. It's a 470MB file, so it's not necessarily something you do on a whim.

Of course, I did it on a whim. What they show in the benchmark looks absolutely fantastic. The second scene, which starts with a group of chocobo riders running through windmills, was particularly good looking. And my new PC scored "fairly high" at 1920x1200 with maximum settings and even higher when I dropped one level to high settings , so I would think that a gaming PC build in the last couple years with a less-than-HD video output would do just fine. Heck, it even kind of makes me wish I had the time to try to get into the beta.

Source: IGN

Yep, Sony had another worst kept secret. In New York tonight, the company put on a show to announce the advent of the PlayStation 4. The company spent a lot of time early on talking through the specs of the new system, which, while they did a good job of presenting, seemed like they weren't nearly as unique as they wanted the crowd to believe.

There were plenty of developers there showing off some new games, though the tropes all felt familiar. There was a driving game that looked lovely. There was a FPS - being Sony, it was a Killzone game. There's an Infamous game.

There was some interesting stuff. Johnathan Blow was there, he of Braid fame, talking about his next game appearing on the PS4. Blizzard showed up to announce Diablo III for the new console (as well as for PS3). Bungie showed up to tell everyone that Destiny will be on PS4 too, which is a nice slap to Microsoft.

Yeah, though, I intentionally buried the lede. What did Square Enix do, right? Well, not that much. They showed the Agni's Philosophy demo, looked the same as before. However, this time they said it was running on PS4 hardware. Was it always? We don't know. Also, Final Fantasy brand director Shinji Hashimoto appeared to say: "yes, there's a Final Fantasy game coming for PS4" and that it will show at E3. Zero other details. Sorry!

The PlayStation 4 will arrive for Holiday 2013.