News

More like Lufia: A Whole Damn Series Resurrected. Square-Enix is bringing back the cult favorite Lufia series (known as Estpolis or Estopolis in Japan) in the form of Lufia: A Legend Resurrected (Estpolis Denki: Yomigaeru Densetsu in Japan), a remake of Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals. The game will be a 3D action-RPG for the DS, bringing back the series staples of complex dungeon puzzles and customizable spells and special weapon attacks, but forgoing the traditional turn-based system for an action battle system where party members can perform team attacks.

News of this revival dropped last week in Japan's Famitsu magazine, with a second Lufia spot appearing this week explaining the new battle system. Lufia's developer, Neverland Software, whose more recent games include the Rune Factory series, is running the show once again, this time with Square-Enix producing. If Legend Resurrected is even half as fun as its SNES predecessor, then expect laszlow to make this a day-one purchase.

Source: RPGFan, More RPGFan

The Square Enix news tidbits for this week get a big flourish, as Squenix have just officially dated Final Fantasy XIII for North America (and, if you believe the video, also probably Europe?). The games for the two platforms will launch simultaneously on 9 March, 2010, which seems pretty fast; however, Yoichi Wada did just say the other day that the company was done with the Japanese version and was already applying just the final touches to the Western one. The official release announcement comes with a slick video as well, which you can watch at Kotaku or, probably, on Playstation Home.

If you haven't preordered yet, you certainly can - AmaCoN has not updated the release date as yet, but it surely will quite soon.

That's the big news of the day, but you might also be interested to know that Dragon Quest VI for the Nintendo DS has been officially dated for Japan, and that the first official release for the West should follow soon after; additionally, the company brought forth two more classes for Final Fantasy XIV, the Pugilist and Gladiator, silhouetted against the very same backdrop we've all already seen.

Have a good weekend, and I hope to see your Final Fantasy XIII preorders showing up in AmaCoN quite soon!

The title explains it all, really. Put it into your calendar, and we'll find out what's in store for us then.

What? You don't understand? Yes, maybe this topic title was a bit of a conundrum, but it's not that hard to figure out.

A HENCHMEN INVENTOR TENT UNTO

* footbigmike waves wand

ANNOUNCEMENT NOV THIRTEENTH

So, there you have it. Five days until a Final Fantasy XIII upate from Square-Enix. A demo? A release date? FFXIII on the Wii? Who knows. Hopefully happy fun times will be in store for us!

Source: Final Fantasy XIII.net

First news tidbits for November; possibly also the start of the AmaCoN Holiday Rush™? Seriously, get all your friends and family to buy stuff from AmaCoN this holiday. It usually makes up about 30% of our revenue for the year.

Anyway, here are some Square Enix News Tidbits for you. With the launch of Final Fantasy XIII in Japan getting ever closer, Square Enix have announced the release date of the official soundtrack. There will be, kind of typically, two versions—a four disc standard and five disc limited edition, with the differences being packaging, an extra disc with parts or all of Episode Zero and of course availability. Both sets will be available on 27 January in Japan, and with only about $14 difference in cost, I predict that there will be a rush for the more special-er version.

For those who don't care about the Japanese accouterments, though, you can note that Yoichi Wada thinks that "progress is good" on the Western front, and that he thinks it's possible to see a launch either in Europe, North America, or both before the end of April 2010. That seems like marketing talk, and I would expect to be waiting a bit longer than that, personally. AmaCoN still has it for 20 June 2010, for instance.

On the business front, it seems that the layoffs previously reported are now mainly done, with a grand total of ten percent cut globally. Perhaps not surprisingly, revenues for the last half-year were also up by almost exactly a third; of course, our readers who know a bit about business also know that revenues are almost never the same as profits.



Source: GamesIndustry, Kotaku

For those of you who have seen or heard Distant Worlds, perhaps you're saddened by the fact that it tends to focus on the work of Nobuo Uematsu and not the smaller contributions from other composers to the collection of Final Fantasy music. Well, if you can get to Japan in the next couple weeks, you'll have the chance to meet and listen to some like-minded souls, as a non-official production of music from Final Fantasy Tactics will soon take place in Tokyo.

Long lauded for its militaristic feel, difference from "typical" Final Fantasy music, and general quality, the score by Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata is extensive but has never received a promoted public performance treatment. On 22 November, though, that will change as a group of performers brought together specifically for this show will put on two matinee performances before calling it a day, and presumably, an end to the small concert series. The shows purport to play over sixty tracks from the game, custom-arranged into one or more medleys.

Of course, this sort of thing can only happen in Japan; perhaps someday through the power of the interwebs we can all enjoy what sounds like a great and overdue concept.

Source: Kotaku

We've been doing some behind-the-scenes work over the last couple weeks or so that you might have seen as you peruse the site; while we're not quite done with everything, I wanted to give you guys the heads-up both so you can enjoy the new stuff and also keep an eye out and report anything you see that looks funny while we continue to work.

The main thing that I've been working on recently is some updates to the way our still-new news section works. I've updated the main site RSS feed to now link directly to news articles, making it easier for you to read and comment without having to get all the way into the forums from the RSS feed. Note that if you subscribed to the old RSS feed, you can continue to use it, but you should really consider upgrading to the new one, as it will give you full stories and cleaner links to read and comment.

An added benefit to the new feed system is that we've also made RSS feeds for all of our news categories, too. If you have a particular interest in just one part of our news, such as News from Japan, you can RSS it directly and filter news via individual feeds.

I've also added a feature where you can share CoN news via Facebook, simply by clicking a couple links, so your friends can be as knowledgeable about the news we cover as you are. I'll be refining this feature in the near future, as well as possibly adding more functionality, such as the ability to tweet our news via your Twitter account as well.

Meanwhile, Tiddles and I, with some early help from footbigmike, Dragon_Fire, Hanyou, Del S and Olly, have done some tweaking to the forums. You probably won't notice most of the changes, as they're very specific to the server-side operation and security of the forums, but they do lay the groundwork for some other server upgrades that we're hoping to do quite soon indeed that will allow us to improve overall site security and possibly add other new features down the road.

So, please keep using the site just as you always have, and if you have any problems, let us know right away in the Errors and Troubleshooting forum. Thanks!