News

The Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary opening ceremony wrapped up a few hours ago, with a number of games receiving notice. A large number of the reveals are release dates and/or patch content for upcoming games:

• Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, the remake of XII for PlayStation 4, will be out July 11 in the West and July 13 in Japan.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia will be out in Japan on February 1 for iOS and Android. There will be a further livestream about this game later today.
• World of Final Fantasy will get Balthier as free summon DLC at the same time as Patch 1.03, which is not yet confirmed for release.
• A series of Final Fantasy XV DLCs have been scheduled. First, on February 21, the "Booster Pack" will be released, containing a Magitek Exosuit to give you a once-a-day window of invincibility for 30 minutes (and also make you a better fisherman). On March 28, there will be a story where Gladiolus is the playable character, not Noctis. Same for Prompto, though his DLC is sometime in June.

There have also been two new marketing screenshots released as part of the meetings today, and they're pretty cool. One is from Final Fantasy VII Remake, and shows Cloud in Midgar with a giant, looming Seraph Sephiroth in the background; the second is from Kingdom Hearts III, made to emulate the famous Final Fantasy VII artwork where Cloud looks up at the Shin-Ra Building. The VII Remake image would make a fantastic desktop wallpaper, too, click through to see it full-size.

Source: Gematsu

As mentioned in CoN news earlier, Square-Enix's new partnership with Marvel is confirmed and will clearly be this huge, big-budgeted Juggernaut™ with multiple collaborative releases expected over the next several years. Marvel's stories and characters in a Square-Enix graphics engine? The possibilities are endless! What's not to love?

Well for one, this could potentially be responsible for a possible setback in the schedules of one or several big titles Square-Enix slated to release over the coming years. FF7 is already rumored to be pushed back, possibly into 2018. According to express.co.uk (source below), game director Tetsuya Nomura indicated that they have a full schedule for the year including a priority on Kingdom Hearts 3 over all else, and that the FF7 Remake delay is highly likely. While they did not explicitly state that the Marvel collaboration had any connection, more details (and hopefully the release date!) should be coming when the director attends the Monaco Anime Game International Conference (MAGIC) on February 18th.

If true, does this make you feel any less thrilled about the FF7 Remake? We know what happens when this company begins to delay games...!

Source: express.co.uk

And soon! On February 6, the game released in 2015 in Japan and 2016 elsewhere will be released on Steam. Mobius is a Final Fantasy game that, unlike most mobile titles from Square Enix, was developed for higher-end systems using Unity, which should make it a more interesting visual experience on desktops; this version of the game was released in Japan late last year, so one would assume that it will be a relatively trouble-free version for gamers to play. The game's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, told the English Square Enix blog that the game will support resolutions up to 4K and that many players will be able to expect framerates of 60 to 120 FPS, which would certainly be a departure from some PC games the company has released in the past.

Though the release over here is only a week away, the game does not appear available for pre-order in the Steam store currently, so it's not possible to confirm pricing at this time.

The release is timed for a global event in-game. Starting the next day, February 7, a tie-in to the Final Fantasy VII Remake will begin that will feature Cloud arriving in Mobius' world, Palamecia, to fight alongside the game's protagonist Wol in a yet-unannounced scenario. Hamaguchi explained that the assets used to build Cloud and any other Final Fantasy VII-related assets used in Mobius were drawn straight from the assets built for Final Fantasy VII Remake, so Mobius will be the first opportunity for most players to see any live glimpse of what could be coming in Final Fantasy VII's future.

Source: Siliconera, Square Enix Blog

Square Enix, through Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal (the folks you might know from, say, Tomb Raider and Deus Ex), just showed up in the world of Marvel. Yesterday, the company teased a reveal for today; right in line with the company's profile, that reveal showed up on Marvel's Twitter account this morning in the form of a fifty-one-second trailer. In it, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man and Cap all appear as wrecked versions of their accouterments, with a broken pair of Banner's glasses, Thor's hammer, a discarded arm from Stark's suit, and Rogers' vibranium shield, all in rubble.

The theme of the video is "#reassemble," which implies to me that the plot of whatever game this might be could slot in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe somewhere between last year's Captain America: Civil War and next year's Avengers: Infinity War, but to be honest, I'm a little behind on the MCU movies and given the fact that we have no idea where the game is in development, it could well take place after Infinity War but before the fourth scheduled Avengers movie, or even later. I mean, I'm no insider - maybe it's not MCU at all, but frankly they'd be crazy not to figure it in there somehow.

That's all we know right now, but that's one heck of a teaser - one of the largest game developers in the world working (in theory) with what is probably the hottest global IP in entertainment right now. Pretty wild stuff, speculate away.

Source: Marvel Entertainment Twitter

The last time I had an update on the A New World concert series was ten whole months ago, but today Square Enix announced five new dates for the new year. Three of the shows are new to the series this year.

• Kansas City, Kansas: March 11
• Seattle, Washington: March 25
• Rosemont (Chicago), Illinois: May 21
• Atlanta, Georgia: May 28
• Portland, Oregon: June 3

The new dates will be in Seattle, Atlanta, and Portland, and the concerts will take place in conjunction with local conventions in Kansas City, Rosemont, and Atlanta. Benyamin Nuss is listed as the featured pianist for all but the KCK show, and Eric Roth (Arnie Roth's son) will conduct all five.

Apologies for being so far behind on news again - I've been swallowed up with other projects for most of January so far. I hear that Square Enix have a big announcement planned for tomorrow, though, so I'll be on the lookout for that!

Source: A New World

Happy new year, CoN readers! I posted a while back on our CoN social media accounts about the Final Fantasy XV soda collaboration with Jones Soda, exclusive in the US to Target stores. I posted, naturally, because I went out and bought a few (and drank some, they're quite good). The soda is bright orange and orange cream flavored, and it's no longer for sale on store shelves. But, as luck would have it, I've got several extras just hanging out in my office as I type.

Sealed bottles of Wiz's Energizing Elixir are selling on eBay right now for anywhere from $10 to $20 a bottle, and CoN is giving you the chance to win one for free. All you have to do is post at the forums between now and 23:59:59 UTC (or 6:59:59pm EST) on January 15. You can post in this thread to say "ooh, free stuff!," or talk about current events in General Topics, ask a question about Final Fantasy IX, you name it. If you make a post between now and then and don't get yourself warned or banned in the meantime, you're in the running.

We'll give away one bottle for every 25 users who post between now and then, up to four. One bottle for up to 25, two bottles for up to 50, and so on. Winners will be selected at random, with no priority given to number of posts, and messaged via the forums to claim their prizes by the end of January. Unclaimed prizes will sit on my shelf until I feel like doing something with them. Current CoN staff are ineligible to win, but our posts count toward the overall user count. Bottles will be shipped for free within the United States - international winners will be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

Time to get to posting, and to start out the new year with a new prize courtesy CoN!