Advent Children in 2006

Gamespot reports that (maybe, possibly) Final Fantasy: Advent Children will be released in the U.S. sometime in 2006. From the article: "According to the author, 'it's taking a little extra time to work with the director to get all the supplemental elements finished, but the title is on track for release sometime later this year.' Mike Stradford, an executive at Sony's DVD division, is cited as the source of information." I'm sure that all the fansubbed Japanese language versions of the film floating the internets isn't making them hurry the thing out the door either.

I'm not complaining.

If they're going to actually sync the characters' facial movements to the new English dubbed speech, it'll be worth the wait.

I'm probably one of three people in the country who haven't downloaded the subtitled version... I hope that doesn't hurt sales at all.

Dunno

I'm sure that all the fansubbed Japanese language versions of the film floating the internets isn't making them hurry the thing out the door either.

Nobody ever hurried translations back in the day before you could hop on the Internet and download the stuff. It was rough to get Japanese language films back in the day, at least in areas that didn't have a big anime following. I doubt the Internet is pushing them one way or the other.

Excuse me??

I'm sure that all the fansubbed Japanese language versions of the film floating the internets isn't making them hurry the thing out the door either.

How assinine is this comment? It's called supply and demand. If 10% of the people who download this purchase the DVD you've likely paid for translation costs. Then add in all the folks who love the game itself who aren't into downloading stuff off the net.

But wait... downloaders are pirates, and we never pay for anything I forgot. Where's my article moderation points.

Re:Excuse me??

From Wikipedia:

"Not all fansubbers are guilty of hurting the anime industry. Certain anime shows haven't been considered for US distribution, for whatever reason, only to be licensed later when the enormous success of the fansubbing is uncovered. Such is the case for Azumanga Daioh, now released by ADV Films. At A-Kon 15 in the summer of 2005, an ADV founder admitted that they thought Azumanga Daioh would not be initally popular in America. ADV decided to license this title after witnessing its popularity in the fansub community."

Call me a pirate...

I'll admit, I got the Japanese DVD on bittorrent. In a nutshell: I was blown away. The polish, cinematography, everything was so very very good. You can see how much time and painstaking detail goes into a film of this nature.

That being said, I fully understand Square-Enix taking their sweet time with this project, translating it to English. And keep in mind, it's not just the translation; they're re-doing all the facial expression animation as well. That's a pretty significant task.

Don't sell them short. I'll be buying whatever package they throw at us, and if it comes out in theatres, I'm sure there will be plenty of tickets sold to at least one person.

Why not release with subtitles?

Honest question, here... why not subtitle it and release it? There are a lot of foreign films that get released with subtitles, it takes a lot less time and personally I enjoy subtitles... sometimes I'll turn them on for English movies so I don't have to listen so carefully or crank up the volume when characters are mumbling or whispering.

Are we Americans growing so illiterate that we can't even be bothered to read subtitles for foreign-made films? Is that so much work? Or am I just really missing something here?

Conspiracy theory

Anyone want to bet Sony is going to try to get this out on Blu-Ray before it hits DVD?

At least the Lip synch idea is more credible than my half-baked theory. Of course it does seem to be taking them an awful long time to get this out here. Wasn't Spirits Within released in Japan not long after the American release? Did they synch or use subs for that release?

Special effects...

Unfortunately, I was not impressed with the animation and visual quality of the renderings. If you have at least an amateur's eye for video of this nature, you will notice many places here and there where just a little bit of touching up would have appeased the pickiest of us all.

Why bother?

The movie had lots of flashy graphics, and lots of "intense" swordfight scenes.

But that's all.

No plot, just a bunch of re-hashing of the themes in FF7.
They'd be better off not releasing it at all. I loved FF7 when it came out. I played the Japanese version because I couldn't wait. It's my favorite RPG of all time.
It's too bad Advent Children sucked so bad.

Fansub was great for marketing.

I'm sure that all the fansubbed Japanese language versions of the film floating the internets isn't making them hurry the thing out the door either.

Ermmm... it doesn't take exactly a rocket scientist to figure out, based on the fact how many FF7 Fanboys (and how frigging many fangirls) there are, that it was a kind of a boneheaded move not to release the movie world-wide at the same time. Japanese release only meant that the aforementioned screaming hordes of fanboys ripped, subtitled and distributed the movie in an eyeblink - that's the obvious reaction. Had they done a simultaneous (or a near-simultaneous) world release, nobody would have bothered with that. They've only got themselves to blame for this situation.

And the fansubbed version isn't exactly going to hurt their sales - quite the contrary. That thing, as I've seen, has been the best marketing material I've seen so far. What we have here is a bunch of people who downloaded the movie, spout "omg best movie eva!!111!" and really want to grab the complete DVD set once it's out. (And as for those who downloaded the movie and said "this sucked" and arguably cause thus less profit - well, that's either a loss of a couple of DVD rental pennies, or one less DVD that ends up in the dreaded second-hand shelf!)

And if they release the DVD really, really late, and it sells dismally - well, again, it'd be their own fault for not pushing the movie while every potential buyer was still interested of it.

I downloaded it, and can't wait for the DVD

I downloaded a fansubbed version quite some time ago. Amazing movie, incredibly well done. I will buy the DVD as soon as I can just to see it in all its glory. I am sure there are plenty of freeloaders that just downloaded it and don't intend to purchase, but I would guess a very large chunk of the people who downloaded it will still want a copy on DVD.

Re:Expect disappointing sales

Nah, I've seen it already and have multiple copies. I plan on buying the DVD and I am by no means the biggest FF7 fanatic that I know. No, it's not going to sell as many copies as Finding Nemo or Shrek and I would bet Wal-Mart isn't going to have a huge display for it, but the Squenix marketing guys know this already.