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The first weeks sales for Final Fantasy XIII have been tallied in the UK by retail tracker Chart-Track and the result is unsurprising. FFXIII is number one in the chart followed by Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Just Dance. Official sales figures are yet to be released.
However, this is of course the first multi-platform Final Fantasy. Although the Final Fantasy series is more of a Playstation franchise, the PS3 only claimed 54% of the sales. That means 46% of copies in the UK are for Xbox 360. This could be a combination of stronger than usual 360 sales in the UK compared to the rest of Europe as well as the exclusive advertising Microsoft has been plastering everywhere. It's still a small victory for the PS3 however. It seems brand loyalty and nostalgia does count for something.
Final Fantasy XIII's producer and director were interviewed at the French launch event on Tuesday by WriteAboutGames. During the interview, Kitase and Toriyama were quizzed on whether they would like to see a direct sequel to FFXIII. "That depends on how well the game sells in the West!" After being pressed further they share their thoughts.
"In the past three years we worked both on the world and on the various systems. Creating these systems isn’t very glamorous and can frankly be a bit boring. If we could do a XIII-2, we could direct all our attention to the story and refine what we have already built."
It isn't shocking when you look at the companies recent track record. Square Enix has been focused on creating direct sequels to Final Fantasy titles ever since the merger. After FFX-2 there was the Final Fantasy VII compilation and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. This could end up being one of the unannounced Fabula Nova Crystallis titles.
Several of us who have played both the Japanese and International releases of Final Fantasy XIII have noticed some rather irritating changes made to how the game plays. Although the differences are minor, they still have us wondering - Why?
Vibration Many people have claimed that there is no vibration in the English PS3 version of FFXIII. This is untrue. However, how powerful the vibration is has been changed dramatically. You seldom feel it during gameplay and when you do, it's so weak it's barely worth having. This is the first game I've played where the vibration is at such a low frequency I can actually hear the motor inside my controller struggling.
Save Points An extremely minor problem but I assume some of you have come across it. In the Japanese release, when you exit the save menu, you could hold down the analogue stick while the screen quickly switched back to gameplay and you'd immediately start running. Now if you do that you'll stay motionless. You have to release the analogue stick and then try again.
Shroud Menu Known as the Smoke Menu in the Japanese release, you could run around with it open and use it at the most opportune moment. Now when you press L1 to open the shroud menu you can't move. This means you have to make sure you're the perfect distance from your target to use an aerosol or the time limit will run out and you'll end up wasting it. This gets especially annoying later in the game. Several times I've had to get so close to an enemy that I've alerted them and not had enough time to fumble through the menu.
You could say we're making a big deal about nothing but the main reason I'm posting this is because I just don't see the reason for making changes that make the experience slightly less enjoyable. We'll give you our final thoughts on the game over the following days.
Square Enix has revealed that they've shipped 3 million copies of Final Fantasy XIII for the international release of the game yesterday. How many of those copies actually sell is something we'll find out at a later date but you can bet that it's definitely the majority of them. Including the 2 million copies of FFXIII that shipped back in December for the Japanese release, that brings the titles total shipped amount of copies to 5 million worldwide.
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.
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.
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.
Final Fantasy XIII Tops UK Sales Charts - 54% PS3
Final Fantasy XIII Japanese Commercial 1 HD
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Japan: December 17th 2009
North America: March 9th 2010
Europe: March 9th 2010
