Following the
surprising announcement that Final Fantasy XIII will not be a PlayStation 3 exclusive, Square Enix has dished up some more details at its E3 Press Conference.
First up – the reason for that decision. Square Enix producer, Shinji Hashimoto, clarified that, "We considered the hardware situation. Because of that, we considered the spread of the hardware, so that's why we decided that." Not because a big chunk of cash was thrown at Square, then.
FFXIII will remain exclusive to the PS3 in Japan, however. Asked about an Xbox 360 version of the game over there, Hashimoto said, "I think you are right [in assuming that it's not coming out in Japan]". The reason for that is that the diminutive installed base for the 360 in Japan doesn't have the same allure as it does in the West.
The Western world will have to wait for
FFXIII. Once the game is finished in Japanese Square will begin work on the localised versions, so no simultaneous global launch like we'll get for
Infinite Undiscovery.
While Hashimoto said that Square has no plans to make the 360 and PS3 versions of the game different, he couldn't guarantee they would be the same. He pointed to the differences between Blu-ray and DVD. Asked how many discs the game will ship on, FFXIII's producer, Yoshinori Kitase, said, "That's still undecided."
It was also stated that
Final Fantasy Versus XIII will not be multi-platform.
Now dig in to the screens!
Source: Kotaku