Final Fantasy XIII Is Coming To Xbox 360 541
An anonymous reader writes "In a stunning change, Square-Enix announced today at Microsoft's E3 press conference that its next iteration in the Final Fantasy series is also coming to Xbox 360." And I just rationalized the PS3 purchase by telling myself that the next FF will require it.
Re:Elderly games. (Score:5, Informative)
Would you feel better if they gave it a different name? The Final Fantasy games don't follow on from one another, they occasionally have similar themes or side-characters, but that's it.
Think of it more like a branding, like Ferrari or Ford.
Xbox360 version not in Japan (Score:2, Informative)
However, note in the statement that it won't be released in Japan on the Xbox 360. So purists who want the original japanese dialogue will still need a PS3. Happy!
Re:Well there goes the history of decent quality.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:4, Informative)
It is also useful if you want to work on the Cell.
It is the cheapest Cell development system you can buy.
My PS3 justification (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have an HD TV yet, but will probably get one next year (assuming I can convince the wife, even though there's "nothing wrong" with our 3 year old SD TV). Blu-Ray won the war, I can still play them on my SD TV with the PS3, and I don't want to be thinking "crap I could have got this DVD on Blu-Ray instead" when I do upgrade.
I can play videos remotely off MythTV/MythVideo, and any other upnp media servers.
I can play most of my PS2 games on it (80GB model) - only one didn't work, so I'm replacing a device rather than adding one.
Free online play.
The blu-ray player software is updated to make use of new features.
Re:Nintendo? Dissed. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've never been a Sony fanboy.... BUT (Score:4, Informative)
During the format wars, Sony updated the Blu-Ray version by adding new features; new features that made new Blu-Ray discs incompatible with older players.
Uh, no. No, they didn't. The spec was published before the PS3 was even released. The interim specification with missing features was published at the request of the other Blu-Ray manufactures, not Sony, and the new disks are still 100% compatible with those old players.
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:3, Informative)
I'll try not to be fanboyish here, but here's why I like the 360 more than the ps3.
1) Xbox live. Sony's online service is free for a reason, it isn't very good *yet*. If it gets to be as good as Live, Xbox will have a problem on their hands. Not yet. I didn't really understand why Live was so important until I signed up for it and saw the drastic difference it made to be the backbone of every game. Now, the benifits of live go away if you don't have friends/family with xbox's, or at least the "wow" factor goes away without being able to share your experiences with your friends.
2)Xbox Live Arcade is a great service and has a ton of games that are available only on XBLA. The board game adaptations are great to play with friends and family over long distances. RezHD, N+, Penny Arcade, Catan, carcassone, Ikaruga (funny how they are all adaptations!) but their best version lives on XBLA. Sony has a small smattering of great games on their service (echochrome, flow, warhawk), but the depth and width of the games are lacking after those select few.
3) Each system has system exclusives that are wonderful. Just depends on which games fit your taste better. Killzone2 vs. Halo 3. Forza vs. GT5. etc. etc.
Re:I've never been a Sony fanboy.... BUT (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I've never been a Sony fanboy.... BUT (Score:2, Informative)
The PS3 also will upconvert your old DVD's to 1080p. So, your library of DVD's isn't obsolete like VHS tapes were with DVD's. It'll make all your DVD's look better.
If you have a native 1080p television, like an LCD or plasma, it already upconverts any acceptable signals to 1080p so it can display it at all. At some point, it has to achieve a 1:1 pixel mapping for the physical display. If you plug your DVD player into your 1080p display, congratulations, your DVD is playing upconverted. You could do the same with your VCR. It'll still look like ass, but it'll be 1080p ass.
Upconverting doesn't improve quality. It makes it look correct for your chosen display.
Re:I've never been a Sony fanboy.... BUT (Score:5, Informative)
Well put.
Another point you forgot to mention, but which is just as important in my opinion, is the noise level. The PS3 is very quiet, almost silent in fact, which is of paramount importance when you're watching media in my opinion.
Taking nothing away from the Xbox 360 as a games console but it just doesn't hold a candle to the PS3 as a media centre. You just can't live with the noise it makes, unless your standards are already so low to begin with.
PS3 + Bluray + 1080p screen + decent audio kit = unrivalled in the home.
Comment removed (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:4, Informative)
That and the fact that FF is really not a franchise for casual gamers... it doesn't really cater to the Wii audience regardless of how large that audience is.
As of March 31, 2008, Twilight Princess sold 4.52 million copies on the Wii.
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:2, Informative)
Gameplay?
I think it's fairly safe to say the wiimote hasn't been the revolutionary leap in control it was played up to be.
I can't think of a single high quality game that has been transformed by it.
Mario Galaxy has the best use of it but a lot of the controls were traditional.
Metroid Prime 3 was frustrating for me personally, the constant requirement to aim was counter to the game's puzzle-like nature.
Zelda was nothing special with most of the motion controls being just button substitions (though I can understand that, what with it being a Gamecube game)
Mario Kart is better controlled with the analogue stick rather than turning the remote.
Smash Brothers almost demands the use of a traditional pad.
Some have raved about Resident Evil 4 but I couldn't get on with that either, though in part I think that's a problem with the game. Controlling Leon feels like driving a bus!
Re:Well there goes the history of decent quality.. (Score:1, Informative)
If you thought that based on FFVIII, then you must've had a monster PC back then. Square's PC coders have always been 3rd rate. Simply being on the world map in FFVIII would cause most computers to beg for mercy, and it's not like the geometry was that complicated or that the poly count was high.
FFXI is a great example of how bad their PC developers are. For the longest time they claimed they wouldn't allow FFXI to be windowable because of "DirectX limitations". Meanwhile, two different third parties developed add-ons that windowed the application, in addition to adding interface improvements and the like.
Five years after the original release, Square finally adds its own windowed mode, which they claim they figured out how to do in DirectX 9. And you know what? It runs at like half the frame rate in windowed mode. The third-party windower? No problems at all. It's ridiculous.
Couple that with the fact that each update to FFXI routinely breaks code that is completely unrelated to the items they list as updated. The last patch caused one ability, Sneak Attack, to be useable from any angle on the target, whereas it's supposed to only be from behind. Nothing in that patch had anything to do with Sneak Attack, the Thief class, new monsters, or anything. So why did it break?
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:0, Informative)
30 years of stifling innovation and screwing over consumers VS 50 years of stifling innovation and screwing over consumers
Fixed that for you.
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:3, Informative)
I am not a Microsoft fanboy. I probably would have been in the ps3 camp if Sony had not pulled a Vista with it. Seeing as they did, I have a 360.
Microsoft almost pulled a Vista with this system, though they were saved by 1) Sony screwing up worse and 2) Nintendo pursuing an entirely different demographic with their system. I'm sure you've heard the litany of problems by now, Microsoft screwing up the GPU's by doing the design in-house, heating problems, crappy build problems, etc. Pretty much all of these problems have been worked out by now.
As an Xbox 360 owner, you will still be faced with the following problems:
1) They're noisy sumbitches. They have to be with the heat they put out, they need the fans.
2) The heat! As I said above, they run hot. You CANNOT sit them on carpet, you CANNOT put them in an entertainment center and run them with the glass door closed. Do that and they will overheat! Heat=death. Keep them well-ventilated.
3) While these systems are essentially gaming pc's, Microsoft has them locked down so cool software hacks are tough. You should by rights be able to use these systems as media center pc's, streaming movies off your home PC. This only works if the movies are purchased from Microsoft stores, have WMA encryption, yadda yadda. Music and movies you torrented will not play. WMA-encrypted movies you have will only be streamable via media player 11 or better. You have the option of hacking this with a product called Tivosity but there are headaches associated with that, namely that you cannot seek within a video that is being transcoded on the fly. And there's other hacks you have to do to force a preemptive transcode of the movie so that you can play it for the first time and seek through it.
The noise factor would have been worse with the system I used it like the consoles I'd owned years back with wired controllers. I used to sit in front of the TV and play it directly like that. With the new systems coming with wireless controllers and the HDTV's being so big, I can sit back on the couch and play. The thing is, the console is still rather loud.
So as far as this generation of consoles go, the Xbox wins by default. It's got potential but a number of flaws. It would have been clear loser if Sony had not failed. The PS3 has elegant hardware, is too damn expensive for normal people to justify buying, and I hear it's a bitch to develop for. Both systems are aimed at traditional gamers. The Wii expands from the traditional Nintendo kid market and has been a phenomenal success in that regard. It's not the usual hardcore gamer system. No HDTV output, underwhelming horsepower, but a huge emphasis on design and playability. Xbox and PS3 are catering to the Doom crowd and Wii is going for the kind of people who made Myst, Solitaire, and Barbie Fun-House top-sellers -- not the hardcore gamer demo but a hugely popular and underserved market. That being said, many people buy a 360 and a Wii, get the best of both worlds, and that's still cheaper than one PS3. Microsoft, even with this win, is bleeding out the ass on the balance sheet. This victory is pyrrhic. Financially, Nintendo has beaten everyone's head in with a shovel.
Re:INTERESTING?!?!?!?!?!?!? (Score:3, Informative)
As blizzard has stated, they do not release to OSX to increase marketshare. They would actually be losing money on that deal. Their intention in multiplatform development is for the sake of quality. The fact that they get additional sales out of the deal is nothing but a perk.
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:4, Informative)
It does when you're trying to adapt complex graphics originally designed to push the limits of the PS3. "Pleasing" and "Jaw Dropping" are two different things, and FF typically goes after the latter. Adapting the game to the 360 is a matter of tweaking the engine a bit. Adapting the game for the Wii is a matter of completely overhauling the graphics and engine to run on slower hardware.
Re:I've never been a Sony fanboy.... BUT (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Well there goes the history of decent quality.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:3, Informative)
Uh huh. You do realize that hasn't been true since November, right? Ever since the last fall update the Xbox 360 has been perfectly capable of playing most of the Divx/Xvid encoded AVIs I've thrown at it without transcoding. If you have a linux box to feed it content you can use ushare [geexbox.org] to serve it up with UPnP headers that the Xbox 360 understands, without transcoding. Supposedly you're also supposed to be able to burn avi files to a disc or put them on a USB storage device of some sort and play them off of that, but I haven't tried that yet.
Re:Final Post (Score:3, Informative)
At yesterday's E3 announcement from Microsoft, the autumn update for the 360 was unveiled. One of the new features is the optional ability to install your games to the hard drive for fast loading times and no disc switching (if it's a multiple-disc game). You still need to insert the primary disc for the game, to prove you own it, but once it's verified the disc is in the drive it won't spin it up at all and will just read from the disk.
The 360 Elite comes with a 120GB drive. I presume (read: hope) Premium and Core consoles can be fitted with this drive too.
Re:Speculation/FUD+Slashdot == Karama! (Score:3, Informative)
Well, to my understanding Sony was initially working on FFXIII and the White engine (now Crystal Tools) for the PS2 and started redesigning both for the PS3 some time back.
One has to keep in mind the FF series isn't about pushing technical limits in beautiful graphics, it's more smart implementation and efficient use of resources. This dates back even to their original games with very nice looking sprites. A 19x19 sprite done by a shitty artist didn't take more CPU to move around than one of the same size done by an exceptional pixel artist.
There's also no word on if both are planned to be released on the same date. It's unlikely. As was the case with VF5, an extra 6 months was spent working on the 360 version due to the late decision to not have it be a PS3 exclusive (due to poor sales of the console). The holders of great franchises seem to have learned not to rush their cash cows to other platforms in the same manner as previous generations. In previous times, if you had an Xbox1 it would have been advisable to avoid anything ported from a PS2 since it would likely have ugly graphics with no anti-aliasing, no decent lighting, and forget HD video modes.
Re:I've never been a Sony fanboy.... BUT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I have always been a Sony fanboy... (Score:3, Informative)
For any publicly held corporation, the individuals in that corporation have a legal duty to behave badly in order to get more money, as long as that action is within the law.