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It may have taken far longer than we expected but Final Fantasy XIII has finally been released worldwide. I'm sure most of you are too busy furiously racing through the game to read this but we hope you've enjoyed our coverage over the past few years and will continue reading our future coverage of the Fabula Nova Crystallis compilation.
Our Final Fantasy XIII Spot the Difference competition finished earlier today and I can't believe how much I underestimated your want for free stuff. Over the past eight days we've received 631 entries, effectively rendering my inbox useless. I selfishly didn't tell you how to send your images to me and let you figure it out for yourselves. Luckily most of you used an image host but to the rest of you, sorry for not replying to your pleas for help but I simply didn't have time. I also apologise to people who sent in descriptions rather than images of their solutions but I couldn't count them.
I've spent a huge amount of the last 2 days checking through all your entries and out of the total 631 I received, 344 of them were correct. You can see the correct solution below. Don't worry if yours doesn't look identical. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I'd like to thank Whiplash for actually creating the puzzle and making this possible.
Original/Solution
Now to the winner! I asked my lovely assistant to pick a random email address from the list of winners I compiled. When I searched the email address to double check the winner was correct, I realised who this person was. By an extremely weird coincidence it's someone who's helped us out before.
Shlizar Axis! Well done and thanks to everyone who took part. We'll be sure to do more competitions in the future.
Final Fantasy XIII reviews have begun pouring out of international gaming sites over the past couple of hours after Square's embargo was lifted today. So far, many reputable sites have posted their reviews and unfortunately they all agree the title is hardly the "triple A" effort we expected. See the scores and links to the reviews below.
It looks like Microsoft hasn't bought the exclusive rights to every commercial for Final Fantasy XIII. This new advert being shown in the US advertises Final Fantasy XIII for both the PS3 and Xbox 360. Give it a watch below.
The advertising onslaught for Final Fantasy XIII in the UK has begun with a nationwide bus, poster and TV campaign. Like the US commercial, Microsoft appears to have paid a good amount of money to make sure it's exclusively advertised for Xbox 360. VG247 has the advert available for all to see below.
A week before it's international release, the Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII has been leaked. Unsurprisingly pirates have gotten their hands on it and it's appearing on torrent sites all over the web. Whether this could cause a substantial hit on sales or not is up for debate but we can assume people at both Square and Microsoft are looking into the source of the leak.
In October last year, Microsoft took action against pirates playing Forza 3 and Borderlands early by permanently banning their accounts. The following month they banned any modified consoles connected to Xbox Live rendering them useless. It's uncertain whether they will take similar action with Final Fantasy XIII.
For those of you wanting to get your hands on the Official Final Fantasy XIII Guide but haven't pre-ordered it yet, you're in luck! We're holding a competition where one of you lucky readers has the chance to get it for free.
All you have to do is spot the 13 differences between the screenshots below. Circle them in any imaged editing software and send your results to us via our Contact form. You must select the "Competition" subject otherwise your entry will be ignored. All entries must be in by noon GMT on the 5th March. A winner will be randomly selected from the group of correct entries and will be contacted for shipping details.
Square Enix has sent the press Final Fantasy XIII propaganda consisting of two fugitive case files for Lightning and Snow from PSICOM. Brian Crecente has scanned in both the case files which include background details of both the characters as well as their known offences Cocoon. See the full case files below.
Tetsuya Nomura was interviewed by Famitsu this week about Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. He was also asked about the progress of future projects he was working on. Concerning Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Nomura said that "development is going well, however there is still more to be done".
"From the beginning, the character presentation on the world map was similar to FF* (the magazine has intentionally censored the asterisk parts), where you would see a very small Noctis running around. It was somewhat lacking and so it was altered to be more like FF*’s system.
* denotes a censored number by Famitsu"
Because of these alterations, Nomura is unsure whether it will be ready for this years E3 like he said back in October. He says he has to balance development with other titles he's working on and is currently discussing how they will proceed with producers.
Final Fantasy XIII sponsored the NBA Celebrity All-Stars game showed yesterday on ESPN. During the show, the first international advert for FFXIII was shown. Interestingly, the advert is for the Xbox 360 version of the game only indicating that either Square think 360 gamers needs to be marketed to more or Microsoft have paid for the advert.
The commercial includes Xbox 360 footage of FFXIII backed by Leona Lewis' theme song for the game. Thankfully, someone has uploaded the commercial for all to see. Check it out below.
Final Fantasy XIII Released Worldwide
Final Fantasy XIII Japanese Commercial 1 HD
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Japan: December 17th 2009
North America: March 9th 2010
Europe: March 9th 2010
