News

Distant Worlds and A New World have updated their schedules again, adding a few new events coming soon. For Distant Worlds, a show has been added in Miami on November 4 (a day after the Boca Raton show, for Floridians who couldn't make that date), as well as Nashville on January 22, 2019. This will be the first visit to either city in five years; Susan Calloway is confirmed for Miami but no major announcements for Nashville as yet. Both shows are on sale now.

A New World has added just one new date, at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles on February 23, 2019. Tickets for this event are also on sale now.

For folks looking to see or meet Nobuo Uematsu at their preferred show, some potentially unfortunate news; Kotaku reported yesterday that Uematsu has cancelled an upcoming performance in Japan for health reasons; our hopes are that he recovers soon!


Source: Distant Worlds, A New World, Kotaku

Tokyo Game Show 2018 starts up on September 19, and being the hometown show for Square Enix headquarters, naturally there is bound to be a lot of news. There's nothing huge yet, of course, but some pieces of information have been released as an appetizer for the main event. Up first, an often-overlooked, ten-year-old Square Enix title: The Last Remnant. A couple weeks back, the PC version of the game was pulled from digital shelves, leaving some to wonder why; the answer came this week, with an announcement of a new remaster for PS4. The game will get the requisite remaster upscaling of graphics and changes to the game engine, and will contain all of the features added to the Windows version of the game after its console release. It's getting a global release on December 6, and will retail in the United States at $19.99, digital-only.

That's not the only remaster of a niche Squenix game announced this week, though; the original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was announced for a PS4 and Switch release in 2019. It's also going to be a worldwide release when it comes. The initial announcement trailer is thin on info, implying that the game won't necessarily be an immediate drop in 2019. The trailer also leads with a disclaimer about the game being in development, which makes sense as the visuals do look like they're probably going to get another pass at polish.

The game with more trailers than any other, though, has to be Kingdom Hearts III. I don't know how many I've linked to in one form or another over the last couple years. Tokyo Game Show is the last major show before the game is due to release in January, though, so naturally there's another new one; this time around, Square Enix have released a short version of what will appear at the actual show, featuring Baymax, Hiro, and the rest of Big Hero 6. The Baymax voice actor does a great job of sounding like the movie version... in Japanese.

The last little tidbit before TGS starts up is the first glimpse of anything in motion from Studio Istolia. We had them in the news just a couple weeks back, but they're clearly making progress as the first tease of the studio's first game, still temporarily titled "Project Prelude Rune," appeared in a pre-TGS video produced by Sony. The snippet runs for a minute, and mainly shows a character running through a fairly standard JRPG environment. It does look pretty nice, though, and appears to be in-engine video as the game is being developed in Unreal Engine 4.

That's it for the big news before TGS; stay tuned for more from the show next week, one hopes.

Source: Siliconera, Gematsu, Kotaku

Announced today, Square Enix is joining with Chinese conglomerate Tencent for a new "strategic alliance" for game development. It appears that the main thrust of this new alliance is the formation of a new joint venture company that will be used to develop new AAA tiles for both new IPs and also around the licensing of existing IPs. Square Enix Holdings' president, Yosuke Matsuda, was quoted as saying that the alliance will be a boost for diversifying content offerings and getting to a wider customer base.

For those unfamiliar with Tencent, they are a massive, publicly-traded conglomerate out of Shenzhen, China, with holdings in tons of tech-related industries. With regards to gaming, they are majority owners of Riot Games (League of Legends) and Supercell (Clash of Clans), and own stakes in Activision Blizzard, Epic, Ubisoft, Paradox, and several other smaller game companies.

There's a lot not said in the announcement, which is not surprising given the fact that it's a brand-new concept today. However, based on what we know right now, I think we can safely make a couple of assumptions. First, it doesn't seem like this will change too much in Square Enix' core business. Flagship franchises currently managed by the main Squenix offices will likely remain the same, since the new company is exactly that - new and separate. Second, this will likely impact Asian markets first, given the fact that the new partnership is between a Japanese and a Chinese company (no word yet on where the new company will be headquartered). Third, there's a pretty good chance that there might be some bizarre concepts using Final Fantasy characters and settings showing up in the future.

Source: Siliconera, Wikipedia

Back in April, Sega (apparently, I clearly missed it) announced some re-releases of some very old games as digital downloads for Switch. Among them are the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, but more interestingly for RPG players, the first Phantasy Star game is coming too. It's a heavily-upgraded version for Switch, as well; the game is adding automapping for its dungeons, a bestiary, a full list of equipment from the game's menus, and a reduced-difficulty mode.

It's coming out in Japan next month and will be 925 yen, a little over eight dollars. The game's been announced for the West, too, but with no release date or confirmed price point (though you can probably expect about ten dollars). I never got to play any of the Phantasy Star series growing up, and I don't yet have a Switch, but this looks like a pretty nice package. Good for Sega for freshening things up!

Source: Kotaku, Sega Ages | Phantasy Star

It seems like far more recently than February of 2017 that Square Enix announced the creation of their new development shop Studio Istolia, but the timestamps don't lie. We haven't heard much about the new studio or its first project, "Project Prelude Rune," in the intervening time, but this week there was finally an update to the company's official website.

The update consisted of a new piece of concept art, showing a village perched above a lake in a soft-focused, dreamlike forest setting, but also a number of job openings for their Tokyo office. The jobs are fairly typical for a game development project, including concept art, technical art, map designers, user interface designers, planners and programmers, but the list does imply that the company is not planning on shifting workers from other studios to this new one and is instead mainly aiming for outside hires.

There's still no news about what Prelude Rune might be in terms of a game genre, or when or on what platforms we might see it. But that's not surprising given that they are still clearly ramping up the team's headcount. More news is sure to follow, though I would have to assume that it won't be this calendar year.

Source: Gematsu

For gamers out there still enjoying Final Fantasy XIV, Square Enix has just released a long-awaited companion app to streamline the gameplay experience. It's available free for both iOS and Android, and provides an app interface to a number of useful features, enough so that it's hard to pick out which might be the best. Players with active subscriptions can chat with other players from the app, organize event reminders and send invites to friends to help plan raids or general gameplay sessions, organize their inventory, and even buy and sell items in the open market and submit bug reports.

Of course, these features are useful mainly to active players, which is why an active subscription is required. However, if your subscription lapses, the app will keep your chat in storage for up to 30 days while you potentially reactivate. Very cool!

Source: Final Fantasy XIV Official Site