Episode 639: Live Games Service

The crew gets excited about the announcement of The Wolf Among Us 2, although it won’t be out for a while, and bemoan the infestation of live service games everywhere these days in videogames.

The news includes:

  • PlatinumGames pivoting to live service games
  • Rockstar announces Grand Theft Auto 6 in a tweet
  • Tim Schafer doesn’t want Psychonauts or any other Double Fine game turned into a movie

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Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360

Yoichi Wada of Square Enix has let the cat out of the bag. The cat is Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 and it will be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 version. This may be an end to an exclusive era for Sony as all their big brands jump to non-exclusion.

This is probably a result of gamers slow adoption of the PlayStation 3 hardware for various issues, one being cost. Personally I think Sony’s move to say “no price cut” in our near future is a grand mistake. It is well understood that they want profitability over quantity but you’re losing your exclusives to a broader audience.

Each generation of consoles brings new industry trends and, for now, exclusive games from third party developers is too risky when you look at overall cost to produce a block buster title like Final Fantasy XIII. Consider the sales of GTA IV, although they were in the millions, imagine how low it would have been if they only released on the PS3. They’d might have actually lost money on the game.

Square Enix can see the writing on the wall, that writing says “ship on as many mediums as possible.” Gamers are split between consoles with a huge segment on Wii and Xbox 360, if you can at least ship on one of those consoles along with the PS3 you’ll do better financially.

(Thanks, Kotaku)

Final Fantasy XIII Demo For PS3 AnnouncedFinal Fantasy XIII Demo For PS3 Announced

The first demo for Final Fantasy XIII has been announced, but, it will only be available (right now) on the PlayStation 3. It will arrive as “bonus material” when you purchase Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete because the game arrives on Blu-Ray and there is plenty of room for this additional content.

The game is scheduled to be released in March of 2009 in Japan, so the United States and other territories may not get an early demo of FFXIII. Does this give everyone a reason to purchase a PlayStation 3? Nothing says it won’t be available as a downloadable Demo on Xbox Live… because nobody’s really talked to that topic at all yet.

Square Enix has publically stated they’ll start the Final Fantasy XIII port to the Xbox 360 once it’s finished on the PlayStation 3, so presumably we won’t see a demo (or a final game) for some time to come. The end result, demo or no demo, is the same: a dual release on two of the big colorful platforms in the way of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.