FINAL FANTASY XII (FF12) is the long anticipated 12th series title in the illustrious series of FINAL FANTASY games produced by SquareSoft and latterly Square-Enix. FF12 has been in the pipeline since FINAL FANTASY X (10) was released in 2001, but was only released in Japan in March 2006. The North American release of FFXII was on October 31st, 2006. As yet, there has been no solid confirmation of a European or Australian release date, though it is anticipated a release of early 2007 is likely.

In the media, FF12’s release has received a slightly mixed reception — while most sources congratulate Square for fielding a solid RPG, some argue that the time spent creating the game could have produced a readier game. Most reviewers, however, have recommended FF12 very highly — indeed, the famous Japanese publication Famitsu gave FF12 an unprecedented 40/40 rating (a score which only five other video games have received).

Taken from: Final Fantasy 12.net

Sony PlayStation 3: Do you go by the little moniker of “money bags”?

Upon further examination of the Playstation 3, my jaw immediately dropped. The specs include:
up to seven Bluetooth controllers, Wi-Fi via PSP, 3.2GHz of this, 256MB of that, Blu-ray Media, DVD-ROM, DVD+RW.. it basically makes you believe you might be seeing things. Lo and behold: Sony Playstation 3.

Nintendo Wii: GameCube remixed

A huge grin broke upon on my face when I first heard the Wii’s specs, but still… what an odd name.

The specs:

A processing chip provided by IBM and a graphics chip provided by ATI, a self-loading media bay, two USB 2.o ports, 512 megabytes of internal flash memory, and so on…

I was really reading all about the Wii, and after several minutes of uncontrolled laughter by just thinking about the name alone, Nintendo proved their point about “innovating gaming.” They proved their point with a dagger to video gaming and anything even remotely normal. Wii allows fanboys and gamers alike to download and relive all of their past Super Nintendo, NES and N64 gaming memories. Moreover: SD memory cards, wireless Bluetooth technology, backwards compatability with Nintendo GameCube discs, all sound fine, but then it branches off into madness: “Wii can communicate with the Internet even when the power is turned off’ (your eyes just widened, didn’t they?) Sony is probably wondering if they are going to ever sleep or see the light of day again while they get word of more and more of the Wii’s habitual madness.

Lo and behold: Nintendo Wii.

I am of the opinion that both consoles sound nice and fancy and all that, but in all honesty, the Wii sounds like the most fun and most reasonable price-wise, so it gets my vote. Please note that due to obvious time constraits and other duties I have at the moment, telling you of the high risks of addiction and video game disease connected to these two consoles sounds beyond what I can explain to you in this set amount of time. Just don’t complain to me if you turn into a Wii.

I just wonder what Microsoft is up to…

Lately, I for one have been playing the original Unreal Tournament online with some friends. I am not very good, but the game is simply brilliant, even to this day.

Of course, when I heard that Midway would be releasing the Unreal Anthology set in August; so, a bunch of quality games (as well as a rather less quality game) all for $29.99. What more could one ask for?

Oh yes, Unreal Tournament 2007 – that’s what! We will have to wait a bit longer for that one, I’m afraid.

Source: Midway

Since the launch of the Nintendo 64 in mid-to-late 1996 (or early 1997, depending on whether you live in North America, Japan or Europe), Nintendo have repeatedly struggled in their attempts to gain their previous stronghold authority in the video game industry. The Nintendo 64’s sales were reasonable, but totaled in at less than one third (1/3) of the amount the, then pretender to Nintendo’s throne, Sony PlayStation managed to achieve in it’s lenghtly life span. Reaching around 32 million consoles worldwide, the Nintendo 64 only sold around 3 million more consoles than its predecessor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (also referred to as SNES), and sold 2 million less copies than the 1989 SEGA console, Genesis (MegaDrive) which were released in a far less video game-orientated generation.

Realistically, the PlayStation (released in North America and Europe in 1995) was what saw off competition from SEGA, effectively killing off opposition from two of its consoles, the SEGA Saturn and the SEGA Dreamcast, thus ending SEGA’s time as creators of video game consoles.

With the Nintendo 64 failing to live up to the standards set by previous Nintendo consoles selling figures, the 2001 release of the Nintendo GameCube was clearly surrounded with anxiety from the Nintendo team, and astutely so. The PlayStation 2 was selling in a big way since the release in October, 2000, but not only this – there was a new kid on the block.

Microsoft were previously a company who made Personal Computers, and whose only foray into video games were limited to a number of small games were now to enter the big time, by bringing out their very first game console, the Microsoft Xbox. Not only was the GameCube desperately trying to compete with the PlayStation 2, but they now had a second opponent; an opponent whose financial potential was unlimited.

The GameCube’s sales figures showed a noticeable decline in the fortune of Nintendo, with the company at this point more than ever, being considered as the ideal alternative for people who loved Mario and Legend of Zelda games, rather than ’serious gamers’. Snobbery was such, that many gamers were put off the console as they felt it has an alienating ‘cutesy’ element to it. This was certainly not the case in either the Sony or Microsoft consoles, which boasted hugely popular titles such as Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec and Halo respectively. The GameCube was also unable to offer gamers the huge number of titles the other consoles catered for. With the total sales of the GameCube (to date) being approximately 20.85 million, the console faired unsurprisingly worse than the PlayStation 2, which has to date recorded a massive 103.6 million shipments, but also worse than debutants Microsoft, who sold in the region of 24 million Xbox units.

This brings us on to more recent times, and Nintendo are set to take the metaphorical battle fields once more, this time taking on Sony’s third gaming system, the PlayStation 3, and the now weighty opposition of the already released Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 is performing reasonably (at not far under 4 million copies sold thus far), but speculation is rife that the PlayStation 3 console is set to disappoint some fans in a number of ways. It seems that the cost of the PlayStation 3 is going to be between $499 and $599 (depending on the size of hard disk desired, the options being 20 and 60 gigabytes respectively), a fee a lot of potential purchasers are put off by. Moreover, the PlayStation 3 has seemed rather anti-climactic in terms of improvements since the PlayStation 2.

The criticisms of the next Nintendo console, the Nintendo Wii are far more limited than those that the PlayStation 3 is receiving. People seem highly excited about many of the innovations the console is making, not least the motion-sensing “Wii Remote”. Frankly, the main concern people seem to have about the console is the name, Wii.

As such, it seems that the console will have much more backing from game developers than previous Nintendo consoles have enjoyed. LucasArts, of Star Wars fame seem likely to jump the PlayStation 3 ship, and bring out an exclusive game on the Wii instead.

With all the speculation surrounding the release of the PlayStation 3 and the Wii, it appears that the balance of fortunes could be set to swing unpredictably in favor of the Nintendo system. Should more big name companies pledge allegiance to the interestingly named system, there could be a huge alarm bell ringing in the Sony headquarters. Game on, Wii.

Source for data, Wikipedia.

Originally known as “Wanda and the Colossus” and “Nico”, this highly anticipated sequel hopes to catch the gleam off its hauntingly beautiful predecessor: Ico. Shadow of the Colossus (for the PlayStation 2 game console) reveals to us, the insanity and wonder of a planet in a solar system that is perhaps just beyond the reach of these creatures.

These beings hold some sort of mystical revival-power, a power that you must harness in order to awaken a loved one. The creatures are gigantic, but the eye-candy, the sparkle off the hide of the creatures is what truly draws you into Shadow of the Colossus and all its ample goodness.

The calm, desolate land that feels like an endless, lonely ribbon of highway, the walking mass of complexes of the bosses, the way they serve you up a challange, the mind melting ways you have to keep to a certain strategy in order to defeat them, the pure absorbing glee you have as soon as you reach the weak-spot of the beast, getting squished over and over again…

Shadow Of The Colossus shows that SCEI is certainly capable of creating first-party quality software. It’d just rather not.

Final verdict: Buy it!

Not only is the Final Fantasy XIII compilation to contain several titles on multiple consoles, the hugely popular Final Fantasy VII series is ever expanding, with several off-shoot games and even a movie released. Then of course there was Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2!

While this seems like rather a handful of games already, one must bare in mind that Final Fantasy XII (that’s 12) is still not available in the Europe or Europe. It would seem rude of Square-Enix to create so many sequels for without considering the possibility of expanding the enigmatic Final Fantasy XII ’series’, would it not?

Final Fantasy XII’s character designer, Akihiko Yoshida, has now revealed that there is a possibility that Final Fantasy XII-2 (FF XII-II?!) will be released at some stage in the future. This adds on from Yasumi Matsuno’s discussion of the the possibility of adding a sequel from an interview in Famitsu.

Thankfully, the Square team are currently prioritising the first and main Final Fantasy XII game’s release in Europe and North America, so let’s try to avoid being too cynical and about the increasingly ironically named Final Fantasy series future plans. Let us be honest, they do make good games, even though Marx may very well be turning in his grave.

What this means is that the already incredibly high cost of production of the PS3 will be increased further by having to add an addition chipset to the console. Sony insist that this is a short-term solution to their need to generate backward compatability, while the long term aim is to add a sufficient PS2 emulator to later consoles.

As well as adding the emulator, Kawanishi has hinted that future consoles may offer different specifications in terms hard disk and network capabilities. One could almost take this to mean that first generation PlayStation 3 consoles should be avoided, in favour of waiting for less a BETA-staged console.

Source: GameDaily.com