SquareSoft has decided to publish the minutes of its annual management strategy meeting in which, the company outlines its plans to make the Final Fantasy series outsell everything on the market.
Final Fantasy X will be released in Japan on July 19th along with a Premium Edition of the game, which will include a t-shirt and some other collectibles. All-in-all Square is hoping to shift 3.5 million copies of the game in Japan alone.
The company then mentioned a European and American release date for the first time, which has been tentatively put at November this year. Breath-holding is not advised, with most pundits not expecting to see the game on our shelves before February 2002.
Square also confirmed details on the PlayStation 2 remakes of Final Fantasies VII VIII and IX. All three games will exactly the same as the PlayStation originals, but will feature graphics that are comparable to FFX. Also, any reported glitches or flaws in the originals, both in the narrative and the presentation, have been removed.
Square guru and Final Fantasy godfather Hironobu Sakaguchi also made some surprising comments regarding Final Fantasy XI. He stated that, contrary to most of the recent speculation, FFXI is going into production for PlayStation 2 and PC only. He said that there were absolutely no plans to bring the game to any other platform.
Square also made comment concerning its investment in the Internet gaming provider PlayOnline. Square stated that it will need a minimum of 495,000 registered players to break even on its investment. As Final Fantasy XI is set to feature a lot of online play, this shouldn’t prove a difficult target to reach.