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Final Fantasy VII International was released on the Japanese Playstation Network Store yesterday as downloadable content for PS3 and PSP devices. The asking price is 1500 yen, or about $15.

A lot of people having been talking about whether this one would actually happen or not. I'm surprised to see it did, and would now expect a US store release will follow suit in upcoming months.

Source: Japan Playstation Store

Starting next Tuesday, gamers worldwide who participate in Final Fantasy XI will have the option to purchase a physical key token that is purported to enhance account security for all aspects of the PlayOnline network (I know, that still exists. Crazy, right?)

This token appears to be similar to other security tokens that you may have seen in workplaces or other environments where active security is required for information techology; about the size of many USB flash drives, the key generates a "random" number every thirty seconds that is used as part of the server login process, thereby requiring a thief to have your username, password, and token in hand to access your account details.

It appears that this token will be optional for the near future, but as Squenix purports the token to be compatible with future online initiatives, it may someday be a requirement for S-E gaming online. Orders are being taken for the tokens now at a cost of $9.99 for American gamers; anyone who orders the token will be delivered a special FFXI item to increase their item capacity, the "Mog Satchel."

Hit the source link below to learn more and see an image of the token. I, for one, didn't realize that account security was such a problem for FFXI; however, given that Blizzard has had a similar option since last year seems to indicate that yet again Square is trailing behind in online gaming innovation (and actually charging a bit more for it, in this case!).

Source: PlayOnline - Final Fantasy XI

There had been speculation that putting Final Fantasy XIII onto the Xbox might cause some trouble if they wanted it on one disc. Now there's speculation as to whether the PS3 version will be a standard or dual-layered Blu-Ray disc. The dual-layered discs can potentially store up to 50GB of data, which means that there will be two scenarios for the 360 version. One, quality is severely reduced. Two, quantity is severely reduced. Of course, there's always the chance that both scenarios will occur, in which case I feel sorry for all 360 owners right about now. Although, you never had the game to begin with, so no loss there... I guess. In addition, the demo that players were given only used half of the PS3's power. According to Square-Enix, the final version will use all of it. It should be noted, though, that the developers admitted that they had trouble working with the limited 512MB of RAM.

Of course, this is just one of many things discovered upon the trial of the Playstation 3 demo of Final Fantasy XIII. Highlights include a significant increase in the quality of the graphics, spells creating after-effects during battle, and cutscenes being rendered in realtime, rather than in CG. Fun times? Not if you're with Microsoft.

Source: The Magic Box

Okay, so, we admit it; the re-emergence of Moogle30 was utter shenanigans in honor of one of the best days of the year. Not so bad, right? Besides, you all are (we think) quite lucky; while M30 and all his antics were a gag, the blistering-hot new Chrono Trigger section absolutely is not. If you want to talk about a labor of love, well, this is a prime example—this section of the site really began even before Caves of Narshe 5, when Neal wrote his first Chrono Trigger walkthrough (the child of which we use on CoN today), while Tiddles temporarily worked on a CT site of his own while simultaneously helping develop the fifth full revision of CoN. When we heard a Nintendo DS remake was in the works, we decided right away to put all that experience to use and spent the next several months compiling all the information into a usable package for you guys, the gamers.

While we didn't get the section out as soon as we wanted to, I think you'll agree when you go to visit it that the section is among the best that CoN has ever put out, and our reputation for quality game coverage continues with every revision we make. The extra time was worth it to us, and we hope it is for you too, especially as you dust off your old carts/discs or pick up the (pretty great!) remake for NDS. Not only did we pour a ton of effort into the section, doing so sparked us to update and upgrade other parts of the site as well to give everything a bit of a facelift and to give you guys all the more reason to keep coming to CoN. Here are some highlights of what to look for in this launch:

• Chrono Trigger coverage for both the original SNES (which also covers the Playstation port, which changed very little indeed) and also the Nintendo DS remake that launched in the United States in December 2008;


• Updates to our fanart section to display CT fanart along with all the other Square-Enix games for which you might want to submit;
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• Revisions to all the splashy images on the landing page for each game to match our pretty new style instigated by the revisions to site skins for our tenth anniversary in 2007;


• The Caves of Narshe YouTube channel, which started about six months ago to host, specifically, Chrono Trigger ending videos and Final Fantasy VI desperation attacks but has quickly expanded to more video than we can currently organize on the site itself (but we'll work on it!);

This new section would have been impossible years ago, and the main reason why is because of the people. We had a great group of people pull together to work on this section; as I mentioned in passing above, Tiddles' love of this game (and Neal's excellent walkthrough) were of course the catalysts to making this section a reality; even though I wrote the vast majority of the display logic to get the data to your browser, I was only the instrument of their inspiration from years back. Additionally, I can't give thanks enough to everyone else who helped this section become reality. The list is extensive, so please feel free to visit the section landing page to get the whole list, but I do want to thank all the regular chatters who were always willing to lend a hand in helping me understand a game that I haven't played tons, as well as all the more standard acts of data collection and testing. I have to especially thank footbigmike and Olly, the former for being willing to do any task I threw at him pretty much any time, and the latter for always keeping a smile and a snarky comment on hand throughout the drudgery of user testing.

That leads me to a final critical point for this message, and that involves updates to the staff page. As we all get older, our lives become more and more complex and it becomes harder and harder to ensure time for a hobbyist pursuit like CoN. As you should no doubt understand, CoN is a volunteer organization, and as such it can be really hard to keep with in the face of so many other things that we all deal with day in, day out. So, we're losing some staff members today, unfortunately, and adjusting the roles of others; I want to thank each and every one of my staff, those leaving and those staying, for their hours of work and for helping me to enjoy my hours of work just a bit more. I also want to make sure that everyone out there is ready to give props to our newest addition, though, coming on officially today with the CT section and YouTube channel already under his belt, footbigmike. This guy is a fantastic example of just what I like in my CoN members and my friends; he's reliable, smart, and just showed up in chat one day and very quickly became part of the very fabric of the site's community.

Oh, and speaking of chat, if you've ever talked in there you've contributed to chat's latest milestone. While all of the Moogle30/Stockbreak madness was underway, chat very quietly hit the threshold of four million lines chatted. That's a four with six zeroes after it, you see.

For the curious, by the way, the four millionth line in chat happened at 13:56 American Eastern time on 1 April 2009, and it was this absolute gem: [13:56] Gabe: I'll do you fast, Peppy. Of course, if that doesn't prove it to you, check the stat yourself at the bottom of the chatstats, page one. Further, to commemorate the occasion, I even managed to root around on Climmy and dig up stats for the entire history of chat (less a few days that are missing due to system crashes, cross-country moves, etc.). We'll update the big stats about once a month or so, and regular stats will be sure to stay on their schedule of updating every two hours.

Now that we have the new section up, of course, we'll be moving on to other projects that we hope you'll like. We don't necessarily know what those are yet, but we're thinking. So, that means we're willing to hear from you. New game coverage? New toys to play with on the site? Shut down and move on with our lives? We'll listen to just about anything, because, heck, we like the attention.

Hi everybody!

I'm Moogle30. You might remember me as the original creator of CoN. Yes, you heard that right: R51 likes to keep it quiet these days, but this was my site! Check the history if you don't believe me - there's almost no mention of me any more but those old URLs give it away!

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase: I'm back, and now I'm running things again, this site are going to improve!
We're going back to our nineties peak, you'll see. The years of stagnation are over. Kupo!

Check back later today for some exciting announcements about the site's future! Also if you think you can be part of this new site, let me know because I'm looking for good new people!

Source: CoN Staff Page