A few days ago, Square Enix PR gentleman Klee Kuo posted an image of the cover for PlayStation The Official Magazine's August 2009 issue, depicting Lightning. He said that the magazine was in the process of being shipped to subscribers and it appears to have gotten out quickly.

Just today, the magazine was scanned and uploaded to the internet. As expected, there are no new images and the information is mostly just rehashed details. Please be aware that, for some unknown reason, a page is missing.



Source: Flickr

Square Enix's Klee Kuo is becoming very useful when it comes to giving us mini Final Fantasy XIII updates. He's one of the few people at Square-Enix to actually have direct contact with the outside world it seems. On his Twitter he's revealed that Official Playstation Magazine will have a feature on Final Fantasy XIII with "insider info directly from Japan!". He also links to the cover of the next issue which features a new image of Lightning.



Thanks to our forum member liberty_kingdom for finding this.

Source: Twitter - SquareEnixKlee

Square-Enix's endeavor to flog us merchandise before FFXIII has even been released continues with the reveal of three new figurines of Snow, Vanille and Sazh. They're pretty much the same quality as the rest of Square's figurine work but will no doubt cost a small fortune. A release date for all of figures is yet to be determined.



Thanks to our forum member IBeatSephiroth

Source: SquareAnthology

Square Enix's official Final Fantasy XIII site has been updated with a new Summons section. Currently, it has information on Snow's Shiva summon with Lightning's Odin summon designated as "coming soon".

Thanks to forum member Thula, we have the images from the website.



Official Website (Japanese)

The new issue of Famitsu contains a feature on Final Fantasy XIII's appearance at E3. It's full of screenshots from the recent trailers we received around the E3 period which unfortunately means there's nothing new. Famitsu have also posted 6 screenshots on their website.

Update: Here are a few more scans from our forum member Dominique.





Thanks to our forum member tiduschen for finding them.

Famitsu has four screenshots from Final Fantasy XIII of Snow and the Shiva twins now featured on their website. All four images were previously seen in the Weekly Shonen Jump scan. They depict the merge into motorcycle form, Driving Mode and the two battling with Snow whilst separate.



The images will appear in the issue on sale June 12.

Source: Famitsu.com

A new Final Fantasy XIII scan has surfaced from Weekly Shonen Jump.

As one would expect, it seems to just be covering what we've already seen from E3, with a particularly heavy focus on the summons. Included, though, is a neat new promotional render of Snow riding the Shivas like the dirty motorcyle they are.



Cheers to member tiduschen for the heads up.

Although Square-Enix's press conference was disappointing due to scheduling issues, we have some new gameplay from a live demo shown on G4TV earlier today. It's now been uploaded to their site, available for anyone to watch.

The demo features Lightning, Snow and Vanille, fighting in an area of the game we haven't seen in video form before.

Update: Looks like G4 have removed it.

Update 2: It took a few hours but it's back up now.

Square-Enix has been busy so far this E3 by appearing at both Microsoft and Sony conferences with Final Fantasy XIII and certain other announcements. Thankfully, they've updated all of their official Final Fantasy XIII sites with the addition of the new English trailer shown at yesterdays Sony conference as well as new wallpapers featuring Vanille, Snow and Sazh. Square-Enix does have their own press conference arranged which will be taking place at 11am Los Angeles time so we may have even more info to report one soon. Keep checking this spot.

Official Japanese Final Fantasy XIII Site
Official North American Final Fantasy XIII Site
Official European Final Fantasy XIII Site


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While we were distracted by Sony's press conference, IGN posted the new Final Fantasy XIII trailer which was included with the Western release of Advent Children Complete. It's an extended version of the trailer which was released earlier this year spanning a total of 7 minutes.

Note: This isn't the same trailer as the one just shown at Sony's press conference. We'll post that when it becomes available.