News

That's right folks; Nomura has confirmed that Versus will not be making an appearance in 2011. Wait, why does everyone seem so unsurprised?

According to information he shared with a Japanese magazine, however, the wait should be worthwhile. The team is apparently intent on focusing primarily on quality, and that they intend to take the time necessary to fulfill this goal. You know, unlike FFXIV. In addition to the brief information from Nomura, the trailer mentioned in our news post last week is now available for everyone to watch (via the Gametrailers link at the bottom).

Based on comments from Nomura, the player will have access to a large number of vehicles in the game: airships, cars, chocobos and military vehicles / war machines. The team is also striving to achieve a high level of environment detail- there will be a day/night cycle on the world map, and environment events will carry out seamlessly while playing. This last bit, designed to be a fully real-time event system, is apparently what's holding the team up. You can see examples of this in the trailer, as certain events are triggered by Noctis' movement and then carried out in real time.

Battle appears to often have many enemies. The player can alternate control in battle between three characters. Nomura added that the three characters seen in previous trailers accompanying Noctis will all be playable, but that there will be several additional playable characters as well. Each of these characters will have their own unique weapon types and magic arsenals, though Noctis will be able to use any weapons or magic.

A few plot-related elements have been revealed as well. First of all, the woman in the evening gown is Stella, a heroine. The woman at the end of the trailer, however, is a completely different woman -a dragon warrior, Nomura clarified- and an enemy at that.

Much more interesting is the man speaking from the throne. This is Noctis' father, and at one point in his dialogue he says, "You cannot be king." This is not directed at Noctis, however. It is also worth noting that the father-king is featured in the later scene in the forest, where the camera appears to be from the perspective of a child. This suggests that the father-son relationship will be relatively important- remind anyone of FFX? A scene towards the very end of the trailer seems to foreshadow the fate of the father. The events concerning the father are clearly very much intertwined with the political turmoil that appears to be central to the plot of the game.

The next time we'll hear from Versus XIII, according to Nomura, won't be until E3, so we'll just have to keep waiting. He did say that the wait won't be entirely uneventful, though: apparently FFXIII-2, the confirmation of which was covered in this news post, will be due out sometime this year.

Source: IGN, Gametrailers

At a special Sony event a few hours ago in Japan, Sony debuted their sleek, sexy new PSP. Boasting a 5-inch screen (a PSP 3000 has a 4.2-inch screen), two analog sticks, 3G network connectivity, an OLED touchscreen, a touch-sensitive back panel, front- and rear-mounted cameras, tilt-sensitive SIXAXIS controls, backward compatibility with downloaded PSP games, and no UMD drive. Instead, the NGP (New Generation Portable, the current acronym of choice for the unit) will use a new memory card that stores games and game data with a large amount of flash memory.

Uncharted, WipeOut, Resistance, and LittleBigPlanet will each have games on the new platform, plus new games Little Deviants, Reality Fighters, Gravity Daze, and more. Even though the system cannot read UMDs, I assume that it can still read Memory Stick Duo cards, as it would take a major hit in the backward compatibility claim if it were not the case (I was unable to pinpoint this information). To demonstrate the NGP's backward compatibility to downloadable PSP and PS1 games, a Capcom representative played the recently-released Monster Hunter Portable 3rd on the system.

Many of you probably heard some leaked info about the "PSP2" a number of months ago. While much of that information has turned out to be true (dual analog sticks, touchscreen), none of the leaked pictures were accurate and several of the leak sources claimed that the PSP2 would have a UMD drive.

The new PSP will be out in Japan this holiday season. There is no current news on a release date anywhere else in the world. So plenty of time to save up, right?

Source: Basic info (Kotaku), Hands On (Kotaku), Additional info (Kotaku [again {sorry}])

If you've been at the forums recently, you not only know about the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier, and you've probably also read some bits and pieces about the contents of the mini-exposition, too. For your convenience, though, we'll roll it up a bit for you here in the news section. Where we ask people to post new news and such!

Anyway, here's the big stuff. As just about everyone knows by now, there's going to be a Final Fantasy XIII-2, and it has a trailer already. This game's still not Versus. That's still its own game, and it has a new trailer too. And after all this time, that's still all it has. If that doesn't get you excited for its prospects, well, there's not much more I can do for you.

In other Final Fantasy XIII news, the game that we always knew as Agito is Agito no longer; the newly mentioned Type-0 is the new name. The other Final Fantasy XIII news is that Type-0 won't actually be a Final Fantasy game any more, but instead is the starting point for a new series.

Square Enix also showed Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Final Mix, which is an extended version of the Birth By Sleep game released last year. Previous Final Mix releases in the series have been Japan-only, and have mostly been Japanese releases of the American version, with a bit of bonus content.

The newest Kingdom Hearts will be coming out for Nintendo's new 3DS, and at this meeting, it got a name: Dream Drop Distance. You see what they did there? There are three "D"s in that name. It's on a 3-D system. Et cetera. Sora and Riku both will star.

Duodecim got some significant play as well, with new characters announced, including Gilgamesh. There's going to be a paid demo in Japan, and folks who buy the demo can get Aeris as an assist character in the full game. No word yet on whether that will be a possibility elsewhere, of course. The American release date was announced separately, too - the game will hit stores here on 22 March, for thirty bucks, and it's ready for pre-order on AmaCoN now, as is The 3rd Birthday, which happens to come out a week later.

Yeah, that's a lot of stuff for a meeting that only happened for about three hours. Not knowing Japanese, hey, I might have missed some stuff, too. Feel free to let me know in the comments.


Source: Kotaku, andriasang, Kingdom Hearts Insider

In case you don't already own one of the many, many PSP bundles released in Japan already (and, come on, who doesn't have at least two?), you might be interested to know that there's yet another one coming, this time for everyone's favorite Final Fantasy universe fighting game. Well, the sequel to everyone's favorite, at least. I expect that it will need to be at least released before it's everyone's favorite in general.

Anyway, it looks as if this bundle, in a striking black and white, features artwork by Yoshitaka Amano on the front and the Dissidia 012 [duodecim] logo on the back battery case. Naturally, it's the PSP-3000 model. This is the first bundle to be designed with Amano artwork, and only the second specially-designed bundle for a Final Fantasy game (the first being for Crisis Core) and third for Square-Enix (Star Ocean got one too).

No word yet on whether this one will make it to the West. Keep your fingers crossed, Dissidia fans, or pony up the 23,000 yen!

Source: Kotaku