September 2006

If you read the report on the Square-Enix booth, then you already know this, but the company has announced a new version of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children with the subtitle 'Complete', and it came complete with a new trailer to show off some of the changes in the movie. This version of Advent Children will be on Sony's Blu-Ray media, and as the title suggests, it's going to be somewhat of a director's cut. Not only will the resolution be much higher than the DVD version, but Square Enix will be adding scenes and making changes to existing scenes. One new scene shown during the presentation was Sephiroth impaling Cloud and hoisting him over his head while his Masamune was still embedded inside of him, much like in Final Fantasy 7 for the PSOne.

No word on a solid release date yet but the trailer did indicate a Japanese release sometime in 2007. We'll have more information as it becomes available.

Source: IGN.com

Square Enix has opened their website of the recently announced Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, which will be released on the Nintendo DS. On the website you can find info about the prologue, characters and you watch the trailer from the Tokyo Game Show (if you're a Square Enix member). Someone has uploaded the trailer to YouTube, so you can watch it there.
Also, here are some screenshots and artwork from the game.

» Artwork: 1 2 3 4 5 6
» Tokyo Game Show 2006 trailer
» Official Japanese Website

After a couple of days of downtime Square Enix has opened the new official European Kingdom Hearts II website! You now can find information about the storyline, characters, the worlds and press reactions. You can also watch character animations, the trailer and download wallpapers.

Kingdom Hearts II will be released in Europe on September 29th.

» Official European Kingdom Hearts II website

Heroes of Mana has been confirmed by the latest issue of Famitsu to be a DS game.

The game is a combination of Real Time Strategy and RPG elements (expected to be the same as the other mana installments).

Producer of the game will be Koichi Ishii who was also involved in Legend of Mana
Scenario will come from Masato Kato who was involved in Chrono trigger and Seiken Densetsu 4.
Character designs are done by Ryoma Ito (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance) and Akira Oguro (Final Fantasy X)
Music is composed by Yoko Shimomura (Mana series, Parasite Eve)

A release date hasn't been announced yet.

Previously, Sony delayed the PS3 in Europe and drastically cut the launch allocation in the rest of the world.
Today, according to a source at Kotaku, the company is apparently running short on developer hardware.

Here's exactly what this guy had to say:

"Sony has run out of PS3 test kits to give to developers. Since the announcement of the European launch being delayed, nobody has any idea what's going to happen with the PS3 port of F.E.A.R... specially since we only have the one PS3. And it's a devkit. In case you haven't seen those things, they sound like giant vacuum cleaners. They're reportedly ridiculously complicated to use, specially when upgrading the firmware. It has just the one controller, and it's not even the proper PS3 one even! It doesn't have those "innovative" changes from the PS3 controller, it's just a Dual Shock 2 with a USB Mini port."

There are two possible results of these last-minute problems. Either it's going to really hurt Sony with the PS3 hype, or it's all just going to even out to a small wrinkle in the PS3 lifespan and in the long run won't affect it at all. Only time will tell.

Square Enix has confirmed the release dates for Kingdom Hearts II in Europe! France will get the game at September 28th. The United Kingdom, Germany and Italy will get the game on September 29th. Spain hasn't got a release date yet, but it will likely not last long.

» Official European Website