Squeenix Dominates ALL
I wish I could apologize for a large chunk of this week’s news being related to Square Enix… but that would not only require admitting that I am wrong (never!) but would also involve there being other worthy news this week. The corporate overlords released their financial numbers this week to find that a combination of brand loyalty and foolish curiosity brought Final Fantasy XIII to sell five-and-a-half million copies worldwide within four months of its release. Hopefully, they enjoy the money they somehow managed to make from the tunnel, as CEO Yoichi Wada has probably alienated those precious wallets with the statement that, just as FFXIII was to be PS3-exclusive but was not, Versus XIII most likely will also be on both 360 and PS3. The majority of players know that Tunnelfest was caused by the compression necessary to put the game on the 360′s non-BluRay discs, and the fear is that Versus XIII will become the same. But not to worry, rabid followers, there is hope that the executive demons are not entirely out for your money! Several trademarks have been registered recently for upcoming games for you to buy! Except there’s that part where most of them are the same as before. Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Legends, and what is anticipated to be a sequel to Final Fantasy Gaiden have all been registered, so enjoy your regurgitated old games. What is this integrity you speak of?
At Least We Expect News Bombardment from Activision
Because providing information assures money in their pockets! Call of Duty Black Ops was another game whose trailers and screen shots flooded the interwebs this week. The trailer that premiered on Tuesday has given us one clear confirmation: Modern Warfare was awesome, Xerox it a few times over and sell each one with a new name. But while Nodick is trying to milk Infinity Ward’s abandoned cow like a Farmville junkie, Treyarch still wanted to maintain some integrity of their own and revamped the engine used in World at War. They confirmed, as the original trailer made us all suspect, that the game spans decades, though it will primarily focus on the 1960s and ’70s Cold War battles. Treyarch also stresses that they are listening carefully to the wishes of their players; while no zombies have been confirmed or denied yet, they stated they have worked hard to fix the problem of weapons being too hard to use in World at War and too easy in Modern Warfare. The only question that has not been given a definitive answer is of multiplayer capabilities. It has been confirmed that the PC version will have dedicated servers, though not the console versions, stating that “dedicated servers will not solve every perceived error you think is lag” and would be too difficult to set up for consoles. If you needed a reminder, this new entry in the Call of Duty series will be released November 9th on the PC, PS3, 360, and Wii.
NOT an Evil Mastermind? Gasp!
Unless I am painfully oblivious to some shameful wrong they have committed, I am pretty certain that Epic Games is the least evil of the companies being reported on today. President Mike Capps said in a new interview that whether you love or hate social media games like Facebook, they are going to bring back the PC game. He states that people are becoming more conservative with their playing time, wanting a casual game to sit down and play for a short amount of time rather than something on a console where you will find yourself sucked in for hours. However, Epic is still wary to transition back to their former PC-loving ways, all because of assholes like Ginia and I that pirate everything. He does, however, have a good point: pirating of games did kill of several smaller companies and cause drastic alteration of business plans. Again, I would say sorry, but I am incapable. Ginia, you apologize, you bad pirate. Even so, Epic developer Cliff Bleszinski states that this could be a good thing, as he personally would like to move away from the standard genre of Epic. As he puts it, he wants to work on a game that “has absolutely no space marine characters in it.” For your next dose of space marines, Epic’s Bulletstorm will be coming out later this year, with Gears of War returning for a third time in April 2011.
Because You Demanded More Boobs
Britain provided boobs! Not Japan, I know, what is the world coming to? The Bedtime Flirt company in the U.K. revealed this week a new line-up in their lingerie collection, inspired by the characters of No More Heroes. Because you really wanted your girlfriend to dress as an amputee and come in the bedroom with a katana? Or better yet, a bloody baseball bat? There is no indication that this is licensed or approved of by Ubisoft, so I would not be surprised to see it removed soon… so order your kink wear soon! Perverts.
I wish SE would just give up internal development and become a full-time publisher.
There was another SE story as well that I omitted: an interview revealed that the developers of Nier made two versions, one for macho Americans that hate any shred of femininity and one for Japanese gamers that like their men to be waifs.
I kinda DO want my girlfriend to do that…
Two versions of Nier? Does one of them not suck?
I admit to being cautiously hopeful about Tactics Ogre reboots, but I know I’ll just be disappointed again.
Also, WTF Lolis? I feel vaguely dirty when your posts come up in my Google reader when I’m at work. I know my sysadmin is going to call me down there to his office and say, “Lane, we need to talk. Loli battle machines? Srsly brah?”
@Ethos: We’ve already established that you’re a depraved little freak, so this statement does not surprise me.
@Lane: Sadly, the reviews say the girly-man version sucks just as much as the testosterone version.
And if your sysadmin is seriously the kind of guy that says ‘brah,’ you should shoot him. Its Texas, just say he looked vaguely illegal.
Jenifer spells her name wrong!!
Anyway, is FF Gaiden even being released over here? It was JP onry according to Wikipedia last time I checked, and I thought it looked pretty decent too, sadly.
And Tactics Ogre? I have still never played it due to the PSX release being uber hard to come by, not speaking Japanese and/or getting the fan translated SNES (that exists, right?) release, etc. Is it a PSP/PSN release or DS port? Or an entirely new game? I thought Matsuno was gone and Ogre was his pet project.
final fantasy legend! so we might be getting SaGa 2! hell yea!