News

Courtesy Gamespot

It has been reported that sales of the Playstation 2 console have exceeded 5 million and are continuing to increase, particularly with the holiday season. The article leaves much to the reader, however, about how this will affect game releases in the UK.

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I know from our UK forumgoers that very rarely does a game get a release in the UK before it does the US, let alone at the same time as the US. This news should demonstrate to game producers that the UK is a bigtime market for games and there's no reason to put off a UK release until later. All it does is frustrate gamers and make them lose confidence in the developers. The only game I can think of off the top of my head that was released in the UK before the US was FF:Origins. The only other game that I can think of that had an excuse for a delayed European release was FF9, where some dialogue was changed to add the UK's unnecessary vowels and all that jazz. What does everyone else think?

Sony has scheduled release of it's Playstation 2 unit in China for December 20, despite massive potential for game piracy, according to CNN.
Sony will be the second company to begin console sales in China; Nintendo recently introduced it's iQue to the Chinese market and expressed intent to begin GameCube sales in the country as well.
The Chinese Playstation 2 will sell for about USD$240, and only two or three games will be available for the system upon launch.
In an effort to thwart game piracy, which is rampant in the Chinese market, Sony intends to sell it's Chinese releases of games at competitive retail prices of about USD$20.

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I find it interesting to keep an eye on this emerging "official" Chinese gaming market, as opposed to piracy; I wonder if it will take flight?

In further fanfiction news, we now have a new FFVI fanfic by Zephir, titled "Diary of a Man... Long not a Soldier."

The focus of this fanfic is a soldier in the Imperial Army. His story starts before the events that we know as Final Fantasy VI. It's a nice one-shot fic written in the form of a journal and/or inner monologue.

Please visit our FF6 fanfiction section to read it.

Through the last few days, we've made several changes and additions to the site that you might not notice right away. So, to make it easier, I've put together a list of what we've done:

• There is a new CoNPoll on the main site, dealing with FF12.
• We've added a new affiliate, Square Sound, who specializes in music from Square games.
• Added two tools to edit DexDrive-format savegames for FFT.
• Added four tools to edit FF6 ROMs.
• Added a selector in your forum controls so you can display your gender in your profile.
• Added twenty-four new fanarts from Kobayashi, Narratorway, and Kame.
• Finally disabled signature images in the forums (OK, so only the staff will cheer about that).

Hope you enjoy all the new stuff!

I'm happy to announce that we have a new addition to our humble FFIV Fanfiction section. There is a new fanfic by SpacemanSpiff, his first for the CoN, called Beneath the Mask.

It is an in-game fanfiction, and I encourage you all to check it out if you have not done so yet.

Remember, we accept fanfiction submissions for FF4, FF5, FF6 and FFT, so if you have one you'd like to submit, make your way to the Site Submissions forums. If you're not a writer yourself, you can help out the authors by reading and commenting on fanfiction, as well as fanart.

Alexa.com, one of the largest monitors of traffic and relational links online, has a really sorry set of data for CoN. I'd like for you all to help us out a bit by writing some reviews for the site. I know a lot of you like the site a lot, and a short review might help us garner some more new traffic.

If you're interested, it's easy. Just visit the review section for the site and submit! Your submissions will go up in a week or so.

Please post here to let us know you've done it, thanks!