La fin d'une ère - Vidéo tirée de FINAL FANTASY XIV. Photo by soubi_
Agito. Final Fantasy World. Square Enix prévoit d'organiser une conférence spécialement dédiée à Fabula Nova Crystallis le 11 janvier prochain au Japon. La société a profité de la courte vidéo de Final Fantasy Versus XIII et Agito XIII actuellement diffusée au Tokyo Game Show pour annoncer cet événement. Bien que les détails soient encore très limités sur cette conférence, on peut penser que les deux titres y seront présentés. Pour le moment, rien ne laisse à penser qu'un nouveau jeu serait présenté. Sinon, le site Internet du magazine Famitsu propose un court résumé des vidéos de Versus et Agito, à défaut d'en montrer des images (ce que Square Enix empêche, très probablement).
Versus : la vidéo montre la scène du combat entre Noctis et un béhémoth (celle sur ces images). Bien que la plupart des commentateurs reprochent la très courte durée de la vidéo (1 minute à peine), tous disent que les graphismes sont magnifiques pour les deux jeux. Final Fantasy World. S'il est vrai que les différences entre les versions PlayStation 3 et Xbox 360 de Final Fantasy XIII ont fait un peu de bruit à l'époque de la sortie occidentale, les choses ont fini par se tasser avec le temps. Pourtant, six mois plus tard, Square Enix vient d'être rattrapé par l'Advertising Standards Authority, l'autorité anglaise de contrôle de la publicité, qui l'accuse d'avoir trompé les consommateurs en utilisant des graphismes PlayStation 3 dans une publicité uniquement destinée à promouvoir la version Xbox 360.
Pour le plus grand plaisir de Microsoft, seule la version 360 de FFXIII était en effet mentionnée dans le spot télévisé diffusé en Grande-Bretagne au moment de la sortie. Le rapport rédigé par l'ASA explique qu'un téléspectateur « les a averti que la publicité était mensongère car les séquences de jeu qui y étaient montrées provenaient de la version PS3, qui est de meilleure qualité que celle sur Xbox 360 ». Pour conclure sur le sujet. Features - Square Enix in 2010: President Wada Speaks. Since the last time Gamasutra got to sit down with Square Enix president and CEO Yoichi Wada, the company has had a year to integrate the Final Fantasy creators' latest acquisition, Eidos -- and we now know that its early promises of meaningful and binding ties between the two companies, no matter how different their styles, was truthful. For one example, we know that an Eidos employee, Julien Merceron, has been named the company's worldwide technology director, and has created an atmosphere of collaboration between the company's Japanese, European, and North American studios.
It's also clear from speaking to Wada that he sees Tomb Raider and Hitman creator Eidos fitting in as a vital part of the overall organization. In this interview, he discusses his company's overall strategy, his view toward integrating companies into a whole and the possibilities of more acquisitions by Square Enix, and the current state of game development in Japan, as troubled as it is, among other topics.
Features - Square Enix in 2010: President Wada Speaks. It seems that like, in particular with social networking games, that there's more of a difference between games in Japan and the West; there are different social networks, such as Mixi in Japan compared to Facebook in the West. It seems like it would be harder to do cross-cultural products. Do you consider that to be a problem, or is it about getting local talent? YW: First of all, to avoid any misunderstanding, I mentioned social networking as just one example of a place where we might bring in fresh blood.
Social networking is one of the skill sets that are missing, so that will be the kind of fresh blood that we may try and incorporate from outside -- I want to make that clear. Having said that, let me tell you that I believe network communities are very local. And the newer the community, the more local it is, it seems. As the president of [Japanese publisher organization] CESA, you've been very vocal about the state of the Japanese industry.
YW: Not necessarily so. Features - Square Enix in 2010: President Wada Speaks. I don't know if you're familiar with OTX but it's a research firm, and it releases GamePlan, a list of purchase intent for the top 25 games in North America. Of the 25 games, only three of them are developed in Japan. How do you feel about that situation? YW: What are the titles? The research was conducted a little bit ago; one of them's out now. They're Super Mario Galaxy 2, Gran Turismo 5, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. YW: My immediate reaction to hearing those three titles is that those statistics must have been taken when major, more powerful Japanese titles were not released. Those are not the titles that I've heard about more recently. [Wada sketches a Y-shaped diagram with a point on each of the tips.]
This axis is the game's element -- for example, is it a sandbox game? The second axis is the characteristics of the device it's for -- 3DS, Kinect, Wii. The third axis is the community aspect. So if you look at all these three factors and ask, "is Japan strong or weak today? "