Japanese and Western fans of the Japanese role playing genre should be happy to learn that Final Fantasy XIII, which is set to arrive for the PlayStation 3 in Japan this year and for the Sony platform and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft in March of 2010 on Western markets, should take at least 50 hours of their time.

The complete experience of the title will likely take much longer as players will be encouraged to explore the game world and also replay it once they finished it once.

Motomu Toriyama, who is the director working on Final Fantasy XIII for Square Enix, has told Japanese magazine Famitsu that “For XIII, the size of the entire game is considerable. Just running through the main story takes experienced players over 50 hours. For the first time, I think it's possible to play through in full in about 60 hours or so.” The statement does not make it clear whether the time frame mentioned includes all the optional content or whether it is only counting the hours needed to see the main story.

Final Fantasy XIII has been in development for quite some time, more than three years, and Square Enix is pitching the videogame as the most important release in the franchise since that of Final Fantasy VII. It's a fine line that the developers have to walk when deciding the length of the game experience they offer.

On the one hand, those who are fans of role playing experiences expect the game to be long and to deliver a coherent story where every facet of the world is well explored and explained. On the other hand, Square Enix probably wants to attract new players to its flagship series, so the title should not be so long as to discourage them from even trying to complete it.