News

Four months after it's PC release, Final Fantasy XI has now made its way to the Playstation 2 console.

The delay of the release, according to Game Revolution, was due partially to Square Enix's desire to monitor success of the PC version and to the necessity of a marketed PS2 hard drive to store information for the game.

Additional information about the PS2 release, as well as screenshots from the PS2 version, can be found at Gamezone.com.

With all of its well publicized troubles, Disney still has a few bright spots. One of those is Kingdom Hearts. Disney Interactive and Square Enix have jointly announced that more than four million copiesof the title have shipped worldwide.

North America is actually outselling Japan moving two million units compared to the 1.23 million in the latter area. Europe has chipped in with 820,000 copies. Square Enix U.S.A.'s president and CEO Jun Iwasaki, was quoted "The unique blend of Disney characters and worlds in a Square Enix style gameplay seen in KINGDOM HEARTS resulted in one remarkable game. We couldn’t be happier with the results"

Kingdom Hearts was recently added to the Sony's "Greatest Hits" label. There is a Kingdom Hearts Gameboy Advance title in the works as well as a sequel to the original title.

In other Square Enix news, GameTrailers.com has a new Final Fantasy XII trailer available for download on their website. The trailer is from a recently released Famitsu DVD (For those not in the know, Famitsu is a popular gaming magazine in Japan).

Source: Games_Are_Fun

Just as a word of warning, our host will be conducting some maintenance to our server tomorrow. You may see some times where you are unable to access the site, or some things on the site may be pretty badly broken when you reach them. These changes will require a change to our DNS setup, which will account for most issues in accessing the site.

Our hope is that the intermittent connection issues with the site will be resolved by these changes. Thank you!

The first Final Fantasy symphony concert to be performed in the United States has become a sell out in just three days.

The concert scheduled for Monday, May 10 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles will consist of songs from Square Enix's Final Fantasy series as performed by Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Ticket prices had started $40 and topped out at $120 US. The only place to find tickets now will probably be Ebay, if even there if one is lucky (lucky is a relative term as the price of such a ticket will probably exorbitant). The fact that the E3 Expo is also occurring that week in LA is thought to have contributed to the quick sell out.

Source: Games_Are_Fun


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It be interesting to hear the orchestra and chorale's rendition of One Winged Angel. Maybe they will produce a CD of the performance.

Prime time television ratings may have taken a considerable blow from the video gaming industry this season, according to a recent article posted at CNN.com.

Nielsen Media Research reported that viewership among the men 18-34 demographic were down some 10% since last television season. It attributes part of this decline to an expanding video game industry.

Indeed, Sony has noted that over half of its prime time (8 p.m. - 11 p.m.) online gaming community consists of men aged 18-34.

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I largely prefer gaming over television, especially online gaming.
I see online gaming with friends as a social event, and as so it is far more valuable to me than a television program--or its advertisements.

Nintendo boasts, Sony counters.

Nintendo has announced that their stock of Gamecube is starting to sell out in North America. The company has stated that the demand has been so high, particularly considering the holiday season ended months ago, that it is pulling units from other markets to send to the continent. Nintendo representative Perrin Kapaln is quoted as saying, "I'd say about 50 percent of our stores are out."

Last year at this time, Nintendo had to halt GameCube production because of a large overstock. What a difference time and a massive price cut can make.

Sony countered this announcement with one of their own: the 25th million Playstation 2 in North America has been sold. Sony is also proud of the fact that 2.6 of these units have been used online while Microsoft has 750,000 subscribers to Xbox Live.

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I won't be surprised if the Microsoft makes an announcement about Xbox sales figures in the next day or two. If I were rich, I'd add a sales figure to each too.