By Andrei Dumitrescu
With no big titles released in Japan, the sales of hardware continue their downward trend. The numbers for the various platforms are pretty close and a big release could push any of the devices to the top during this week.
The Nintendo DS is still the best sold piece of hardware on the Japanese market, but it's quickly losing buyers. The handheld has managed to sell around 47,000 consoles, which is 15,000 less than during the previous week. The PlayStation Portable also lost buyers, but a smaller number, reaching sales of 40,886 after a fall of a little over 7,000.
In the home console realm, the PlayStation 3 continues to sell very well, taking third place in the hardware chart for the seventh week in a row. The Sony made console sold a little over 20,000 units, registering a drop of about 3,500. It seems that the console has now sold more than 3 million units in Japan since launch.
Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii only managed to move 15,525 units, a loss of about 2,000 over the previous week. The Xbox 360 saw an increase in sales up to 10,134 units.
As far as videogames go, the top position in the software chart in Japan was taken by Sengoku Basara: Battle Heroes, created by Capcom for the PlayStation Portable. The new release managed to sell a total of 86,000 units in its first week. The game is one of those titles that could only see huge sales in Japan, being a portable spin off of a series called Devil Kings in the West. Second place went to Oboro Muramas, created by Marvelous for the Nintendo Wii, which moved 29,000 units. The title is also set to arrive in the West under the name of Muramasa: The Demon Blade.
Mario & Luigi RPG 3, created by Nintendo for the DS, continued its good run, selling around 25,000 units, while Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G from Capcom for the PlayStation Portable sits in fourth place, just ahead of Pro Yakyuu Famista DS 2009 from Konami.
Source article: Nintendo DS Falls, PlayStation 3 Goes Over 3 Million
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Hands-On: Battling Through Final Fantasy XIII’s Brief Demo
Gamers in Japan got their hands on the eagerly anticipated Final Fantasy XIII demo Thursday, offering a first look at the latest sequel to one of the world’s most popular role-playing game franchises.
The hour-long demo, which shows an action-packed segment that occurs during the game’s opening moments, has been a long time coming: Developer Square Enix showed the first trailer for Final Fantasy XIII in May 2006.
Since then, the game has never been demonstrated to the outside world, even at trade shows. The PlayStation 3 demo disc, bundled with a Final Fantasy movie and currently available only in Japan, marks the first time that anyone outside Square Enix has played the company’s flagship next-gen title.
To call this demo "long-awaited" would be a drastic understatement: Development of the Final Fantasy sequel has proceeded at the approximate pace of a very cold snail. Wired.com got its hands on a copy shipped overnight from Japan and gave the game a thorough thrashing.
The demo focuses almost entirely on battling small groups of weak enemies. Final Fantasy XIII does not diverge significantly from the formula pioneered in the original 8-bit game released in 1987 — you select attacks or magic spells from a list, and watch what results from your choices. There are a few tweaks that make XIII unique, which we’ll explain in depth below.
Will the final version of Final Fantasy XIII be worth the wait? It’s too early to tell from such a tiny slice of gameplay.
The demo version of Final Fantasy XIII is included with the Japanese Blu-ray disc release of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, a straight-to-DVD movie based on the series that was originally released in 2006. The sneak peek is not a freebie — the version of the movie that comes with the demo is about $10 more expensive. Since the PlayStation 3 is region-free, and Japan and the United States share the same Blu-ray region, American PS3 owners can play this demo and watch the movie on their consoles. Both the game and the movie are in Japanese, with no English-language option.
Briefly stated, XIII’s plot revolves around a battle between two worlds. Led by a mysterious superhuman race called the fal’Cie, many humans have left their world, Pulse, to establish a paradise floating in the sky called Cocoon. The Cocoon dwellers have been battling those left on Pulse ever since. (I got that off Wikipedia.) Very little of the plot is explored in the demo — it consists mostly of an epic battle scene taking place on Pulse.
In the first segment of the demo, you control Lightning, who comes from Cocoon but seems to have thrown her lot in with the Pulse side. She’s backed up by her partner, Sazh, who has a baby Chocobo living in his afro.
In the first battle, against a stereotypically elaborate Final Fantasy robot with giant sawblades for hands, you’re introduced to the new game’s battle system. After Final Fantasy XII’s brief dalliance with a completely new combat system inspired by MMO games, Final Fantasy XIII returns to traditional turn-based combat. The series’ usual spin on this is to run the battle in real time while you’re selecting your fighting options — if you sit there and deliberate, the enemy is still attacking you.
XIII’s twist on the battle system is that during each turn, you can queue up as many as three different attacks, which your character will execute in rapid-fire sequence. You can combine physical attacks and magic spells (Fire and Blizzard are available in the demo). If you want to use one massive spell that affects all areas in a certain radius, you can, but it takes up all three of your slots.
In general, you want to unleash combinations of moves, because that’ll do the most damage to an enemy and contribute to the "Chain" counter in the upper right corner. Stringing together unbroken chains of attacks will occasionally put the enemy into a state that the game calls "Break." Your opponent will flash orange, indicating that it’s ready to be pummeled. At this point, you’ll want to use the "Lift" command, then follow it up with two normal attacks. Put this combo in, and Lightning will uppercut the enemy into the air, then jump up after it and attack it, in its vulnerable state, for massive damage.
In the second half of the demo, you play a character called Snow. He’s joined by two partners, Gadot and Lebreau — like Sazh, they’re controlled by the computer. It’s not clear from the demo if you’ll only control one character in the final game, or if you’ll have control over all of them.
Final Fantasy XIII’s battles, going by the demo, move so quickly that they are chaotic enough with just one character to babysit. In the battle against a Behemoth shown above, I had to cast the "Cure" spell on Snow every few seconds to keep him from dying.
The idea behind the combo-based combat, besides adding an additional layer of strategy to the battles, seems to be to make Final Fantasy XIII’s visual presentation more dynamic. From the earliest days of the series to games on the PlayStation 2, the default behavior of heroes in battle has been to stand absolutely stock-still while waiting for their turn to begin. In XIII, characters move around while they wait; they pace and lunge and dodge. None of this has the slightest bit of effect on the battle, though; it’s all for show.
Are the moves and camerawork as over-the-top as the battle shown in the aforementioned mocked-up 2006 trailer? No. Square Enix has no one but itself to blame for expectations that a "next-generation Final Fantasy" means a more realistic and movielike experience, not just upgraded graphics layered onto the same gameplay formula.
Square Enix says Final Fantasy XIII will be available in winter 2009 in Japan, where it will only be released on PlayStation 3. In the United States, where the game will also ship on Xbox 360, we’ll have to wait until 2010.
Will the final version live up to the hype? We can’t tell from this demo. It’s not that there are any issues with what’s being presented here — it’s that there’s not much of it, and the brief look raises more questions than it answers.
How will battles feel when you can control three characters? Can you control three characters? Do you have to spend "magic points" to cast spells, or are they free as in the demo? Can you buy, find and equip your characters with new weapons and armor? How do your characters grow and learn new techniques? How much freedom do players have to explore the worlds of Pulse and Cocoon, outside of these prescripted battle sequences?
In short, how does Final Fantasy XIII address all the things that make an RPG an RPG, and not just a brief series of simple battles connected by lengthy computer-animated story sequences?
All that is beyond the scope of this demo. We’ll just have to keep waiting.
Source article: Battling Through Final Fantasy XIII’s Brief Demo
The hour-long demo, which shows an action-packed segment that occurs during the game’s opening moments, has been a long time coming: Developer Square Enix showed the first trailer for Final Fantasy XIII in May 2006.
Since then, the game has never been demonstrated to the outside world, even at trade shows. The PlayStation 3 demo disc, bundled with a Final Fantasy movie and currently available only in Japan, marks the first time that anyone outside Square Enix has played the company’s flagship next-gen title.
To call this demo "long-awaited" would be a drastic understatement: Development of the Final Fantasy sequel has proceeded at the approximate pace of a very cold snail. Wired.com got its hands on a copy shipped overnight from Japan and gave the game a thorough thrashing.
The demo focuses almost entirely on battling small groups of weak enemies. Final Fantasy XIII does not diverge significantly from the formula pioneered in the original 8-bit game released in 1987 — you select attacks or magic spells from a list, and watch what results from your choices. There are a few tweaks that make XIII unique, which we’ll explain in depth below.
Will the final version of Final Fantasy XIII be worth the wait? It’s too early to tell from such a tiny slice of gameplay.
The demo version of Final Fantasy XIII is included with the Japanese Blu-ray disc release of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, a straight-to-DVD movie based on the series that was originally released in 2006. The sneak peek is not a freebie — the version of the movie that comes with the demo is about $10 more expensive. Since the PlayStation 3 is region-free, and Japan and the United States share the same Blu-ray region, American PS3 owners can play this demo and watch the movie on their consoles. Both the game and the movie are in Japanese, with no English-language option.
Briefly stated, XIII’s plot revolves around a battle between two worlds. Led by a mysterious superhuman race called the fal’Cie, many humans have left their world, Pulse, to establish a paradise floating in the sky called Cocoon. The Cocoon dwellers have been battling those left on Pulse ever since. (I got that off Wikipedia.) Very little of the plot is explored in the demo — it consists mostly of an epic battle scene taking place on Pulse.
In the first segment of the demo, you control Lightning, who comes from Cocoon but seems to have thrown her lot in with the Pulse side. She’s backed up by her partner, Sazh, who has a baby Chocobo living in his afro.
In the first battle, against a stereotypically elaborate Final Fantasy robot with giant sawblades for hands, you’re introduced to the new game’s battle system. After Final Fantasy XII’s brief dalliance with a completely new combat system inspired by MMO games, Final Fantasy XIII returns to traditional turn-based combat. The series’ usual spin on this is to run the battle in real time while you’re selecting your fighting options — if you sit there and deliberate, the enemy is still attacking you.
XIII’s twist on the battle system is that during each turn, you can queue up as many as three different attacks, which your character will execute in rapid-fire sequence. You can combine physical attacks and magic spells (Fire and Blizzard are available in the demo). If you want to use one massive spell that affects all areas in a certain radius, you can, but it takes up all three of your slots.
In general, you want to unleash combinations of moves, because that’ll do the most damage to an enemy and contribute to the "Chain" counter in the upper right corner. Stringing together unbroken chains of attacks will occasionally put the enemy into a state that the game calls "Break." Your opponent will flash orange, indicating that it’s ready to be pummeled. At this point, you’ll want to use the "Lift" command, then follow it up with two normal attacks. Put this combo in, and Lightning will uppercut the enemy into the air, then jump up after it and attack it, in its vulnerable state, for massive damage.
In the second half of the demo, you play a character called Snow. He’s joined by two partners, Gadot and Lebreau — like Sazh, they’re controlled by the computer. It’s not clear from the demo if you’ll only control one character in the final game, or if you’ll have control over all of them.
Final Fantasy XIII’s battles, going by the demo, move so quickly that they are chaotic enough with just one character to babysit. In the battle against a Behemoth shown above, I had to cast the "Cure" spell on Snow every few seconds to keep him from dying.
The idea behind the combo-based combat, besides adding an additional layer of strategy to the battles, seems to be to make Final Fantasy XIII’s visual presentation more dynamic. From the earliest days of the series to games on the PlayStation 2, the default behavior of heroes in battle has been to stand absolutely stock-still while waiting for their turn to begin. In XIII, characters move around while they wait; they pace and lunge and dodge. None of this has the slightest bit of effect on the battle, though; it’s all for show.
Are the moves and camerawork as over-the-top as the battle shown in the aforementioned mocked-up 2006 trailer? No. Square Enix has no one but itself to blame for expectations that a "next-generation Final Fantasy" means a more realistic and movielike experience, not just upgraded graphics layered onto the same gameplay formula.
Square Enix says Final Fantasy XIII will be available in winter 2009 in Japan, where it will only be released on PlayStation 3. In the United States, where the game will also ship on Xbox 360, we’ll have to wait until 2010.
Will the final version live up to the hype? We can’t tell from this demo. It’s not that there are any issues with what’s being presented here — it’s that there’s not much of it, and the brief look raises more questions than it answers.
How will battles feel when you can control three characters? Can you control three characters? Do you have to spend "magic points" to cast spells, or are they free as in the demo? Can you buy, find and equip your characters with new weapons and armor? How do your characters grow and learn new techniques? How much freedom do players have to explore the worlds of Pulse and Cocoon, outside of these prescripted battle sequences?
In short, how does Final Fantasy XIII address all the things that make an RPG an RPG, and not just a brief series of simple battles connected by lengthy computer-animated story sequences?
All that is beyond the scope of this demo. We’ll just have to keep waiting.
Source article: Battling Through Final Fantasy XIII’s Brief Demo
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