News

According to a recent Square Enix financial discussion,  they plan to release 11 Million units of software in the second half of this fiscal year,  amoung those is Final Fantasy XII.

This puts the release range anywhere from October 1st , 2003 to March 31st, 2004.

Source : Square Insider
------------

I'm personally looking forward to this, not that I know much about at the moment. though.

Still it's Final Fantasy and that's something I look forward to.

Square Enix has sent E-mails notify those who were selected out of the application pool for the Playstation 2 beta test of Final Fantasy XI.  In addition to the game itself, Squenix is also sending participants the Playstation 2 hard drive that is required for FFXI (which has not been released in North America yet).  Whether or not the hard drive needs to be sent back is currently unknown.

Do not fret though if you applied to beta test the PC version of FFXI and did not hear anything.  Squenix says on their website those selected for that test will be notified shortly.  Who knows hoe long shortly is, but it will probably be a month or so.

Source: Square Enix

/****/

I am waiting to found about the PC version myself.  It is cool to hear the PS2 testers are getting a hard drive though.

After hours of work today, the CoN has 34 new pieces of fanart among 23 various FF characters, most of which were drawn by Narratorway, with help from Kame, Hikaroo, Seventh, Bond, and Kris-Chan.  As always, everything can be seen at http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/fanart/.

Also in store for the CoN today is a new FF4 layout of Yang, for Kame.  It's an awesome layout made up of her recently-uploaded artwork in the Site Submissions forum.  Check it out by going to http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff4/ and refreshing until it comes up.

Because of final exams I have not been around much as of late, and now that they are over and I'm back home on dialup I am going to be around even less most likely.  I am also going to be out of the country and away from an internet connection for the second half of summer studying at Cambridge University.  Due to my recent absence, and my future absence, I have decided to resign from the CoN Staff.  I feel that I do not deserve to call myself part of active staff when I'm not around much to do anything, mostly because the rest of the staff works so hard and does such a magnificent job with everything.  I don't think it is right for me to share the same title.  

I have discussed my resignation with Josh, and he was kind enough to offer me a position back anytime.  I will most likely take him up on that sometime in the future, but probably not anytime soon, as my classes will only become more and more demanding in the years to come.  

This does not mean I won't be around, I will be around as much as I can chatting it up and posting here, I still enjoy being here and I love discussing this and that with all of you.    I wish Josh and everyone else on staff the best, thanks for putting up with me when I wasn't doing much, and thanks for understanding why I must do this.

Square Enix has announced more games for their Electronic Entertainment Expo line-up. Most titles have already been confirmed for release in America.

The list of announced games and their perspective release dates are below:

Final Fantasy XI (PlayStation 2 and PC) - TBA 2003
Final Fantasy X-2, (PlayStation 2) - November 2003
UNLIMITED SaGa, (PlayStation 2) - June 2003
Star Ocean: Till The End of Time (PlayStation 2) - Spring 2004
Drakengard (Drag-on Dragoon), (PlayStation 2) - Spring 2004
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (GameCube) - TBA 2003
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Game Boy Advance) - TBA 2003
Sword of Mana (Shinyaku Seiken Densetsu), (GameBoy Advance) - TBA 2003

Source: RPGFan.com

/******/

Hm. I can't wait for Sword of Mana, which if you didn't know is the remake of Final Fantasy Adventure, and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Both are gonna be so goood!

I'll assume X-2 is also being looked forward to by alot of people, any others anyone is waiting for?

There is a price drop rumoured to occur during the upcoming E3 convention.

The new prices that each console is thought to be selling for after the convention are (all prices in US Dollars): Sony's Playstation 2 for $149.99, Microsoft's Xbox also for $149.99, and Nintendo's GameCube for $99.99.

Remember that these are just rumours and that the E3 convention is still a few weeks away.

Source: Games_Are_Fun

/******/

Good news for gamers.  I would assume that the price drops would be occurring everywhere, but the Games_Are_Fun only had the US prices.

$100 for a GameCube?  That's looking damn good from where I'm standing.  I wonder if they are still going to have the deal that if you buy a GameCube you get Metroid Prime, Star Fox Adventures, Resident Evil 0 or Mario Party 4 for free after the price drop have occurred.  If they do, that will be quite a steal.  

Anyone want to buy a console now?