Unnecessarily delaying games seems like a prime example of poking the bear when it comes to how people react. but it is true that we won't have the entire game deconstructed and find every polygon analyzed before non-Japanese gamers can get their hands on the big games. | |
I never noticed this until I was waiting for Kingdom Hearts 2. An American friend had it about 2 months before it was due to be released here, and he spoiled the entire game. He even sent me e-mails from a different MSN account. | |
I has never bothered me if a game takes a while to come out outside of Japan so long as the wait is worth it, although this trend has seen me start learning Japanese so i can just import things. | |
Hey! Don't blame all of Square Enix for the belts and zippers, that's just Tetsuya Nomura! *waves fist at Funk* It's good that they're really doing their best at fixing the difference in release dates, only proves that the gaming biz is improving. | |
I agree with the simultaneous development of games for foreign markets if the game is marketable, which is the case for a Final Fantasy game. It would save development time and localization time. But at the same time with games like Final Fantasy the story tends to change during it's development cycles and makes localization harder until it's all finalized. | |
I don't care about getting it at a later date. What I do care about is missing out on special editions like KH2:Final Mix+ and KH RE: CoM (never got an EU release). I'm happy to wait - just as long as it gets here eventually. | |
I don't mind the waiting I just want the game | |
So the American release dates are a few months behind, big deal. Look at the European release dates or the Australian ones, We're YEARS behind! I can understand waiting longer for a german or french version, but why am I having to wait so long for between an American release and a British release? | |
The March 2010 date for FF13 is North America as well as Europe, so looks like there's bright news for you folks as well :) | |
HA! beat you to this news on my final fantasy user group funk -jumps in glee- well at least on the release facts. ... well yours is still better than mine >.> hands down... but still but on the topic at hand, I am very glad they are doing this and hope they can soon do simultaneous international releases | |
I love Square Enix. | |
Well, its nice to see some company's aren't heartless, evil, money grubbing bastards. I never really noticed this massive delay though, because 1) I think I had only just got broadband when I got KH2, so spoilers didn't happen in those days. and 2) never really got into any FF games. Don't get me wrong, I almost got into 12, but the fact that i started playing at the end of the holidays didn't help :/ | |
It's about time. I'm not sure delaying it in Japan is the right way to word how you're doing it, but whatever gets us are games "sooner" works for me. | |
I don't understand the delays, really. You finalise a part of the script, you send it to the localisation studios to start working on. Other developers aren't having a problem with this, why Square-Enix? | |
Final Fantasy can be um, rather convoluted. And this isn't foreign terrain for RPGs. However, a lot of times the writing is an afterthought in development (and is second to plot and design mechanics) to the point where the script may be altered over and over. It's hard to send pieces to the localization teams if something keeps changing. Makes more sense to start the bulk of the process later in the development cycle. Though it is great that SE is trying to close that gap as much as possible. Though their method (delaying release in Japan) is rather backwards, IMO. | |
Okay, fair enough. I always assumed the script was written first, but I guess when you have years of programming to make a game the script is the least of your worries. Still, I'm sure the process could be streamlined some. | |
Well, I know the German localisation is finished... But I was chatting to the guy behind the counter at Game this morning, and he's been told that the FFXIII release date has been 'withdrawn' by Squeenix, and Game employees are being told to say nada, zip, zilch, niente (given what happened with FFXII) Sooooooooooooooooooooooo... If we're expecting the same to happen as FFXII, we might just about get FFXIII over here before the Olympics hit London. Maybe. | |
It stops people from importing a game rather than waiting for release and levels the field for competitive games and leaderboards. ...though maybe I'm just saying that because we never ever get games first. | |
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Square-Enix to Delay Japanese Launches for Foreigners
JRPG giant Square-Enix wants to see more of its games achieve simultaneous worldwide releases - even if it means holding back the release in its native Japan.
Square-Enix has historically been very good at doing things like making games where androgynous teenagers clad entirely in belts and zippers kill God, but historically very bad at other things - such as getting its games released on a reasonable schedule outside of Japan. A look at the release dates of the six most recent Final Fantasy titles (not counting FFXI) in Japan and North America says it all:
The shortest delay there was with FF9, which managed to eke out a NA release just four months after its launch in Japan, but the rest of the games took longer - with most of them taking over half a year to see release outside Japan (and gamers in PAL regions generally had to wait even longer).
Once upon a time, it was expected that games would come out in Japan well before they were released in the West, but those days are mostly behind us and for blockbuster titles, simultaneous worldwide releases seem to be the expectation nowadays. Given that these games have massive amounts of text to sift through, one might be inclined to blame the translation and localization progress, but that just doesn't fly in a world where Metal Gear Solid 4 can see a simultaneous release around the globe.
Amidst concerns that the Japanese game industry is foundering, though, Squeenix CEO Yoichi Wada told Ars Technica that the model of delayed Western releases for his company's flagship titles just ain't gonna fly no more, and points to Final Fantasy XIII's March release date in North America and Europe - just a comparatively meager three months after its Japanese release - as evidence of the company's drive to achieve global release parity.
"For the last three years, we have worked very hard to close the gap between Japanese release timing and North American and European release timing," he said. "We tried to go for the global, simultaneous release but that was something that was inconceivable, in a sense. But we have been able to close that release window gap to three months. For us, it was a very big step forward."
In fact, Wada says that in the future, Square-Enix plans to delay its Japanese launches in order to accommodate Western fans of its products with worldwide releases, though Final Fantasy XIII really "couldn't [be delayed] any longer." Don't get me wrong, Wada-san, I appreciate the sentiment, but ... wouldn't it just make sense to focus on simultaneous development, rather than artificially delaying your Japanese releases to make us foreigners happy? This isn't necessarily hurrying up the Western releases, it's just slowing down the Japanese ones - the only real tangible benefit I see here is that Western Final Fantasy fans don't have to worry so much about spoilers.
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