14 DAY TRIAL // Square Enix is a very popular company in Japan and, slowly but surely, it is becoming more and more well known in other territories such as North America or Europe. With a portfolio containing massive hits such as the Final Fantasy franchise or Legend of Mana, the company is very successful and it is definitely imposing a benchmark of quality on Japanese developed games.
Because some of its early titles were PlayStation exclusives, everybody believed that the sense of patriotism in the two Japanese companies was very strong, and that Xbox 360 users might not get the chance to play any games made by Square Enix on their console. But recently, with the Tokyo Game Show, the company surprised everyone by teaming up with Microsoft, the producer of the Xbox 360, and announcing that one of its most anticipated titles, Final Fantasy XIII would also be released for the American console.
Also, as a new blow to Sony's PlayStation 3, another very anticipated title, The Last Remnant, though a multiplatform game, will first be released on the Xbox 360 this week, with no concrete dates set for the launch on the PlayStation 3 or PC. This game, coupled with the fact that future titles such as Infinite Undiscovery or Star Ocean: The Last Hope, were or will be Xbox 360 exclusives, made people think that Square Enix definitely favored Microsoft's console as opposed to Sony's PS3.
But recently, the director of The Last Remnant, Hiroshi Takai, who also worked on Legend of Mana or the Romancing SaGa trilogy, said that the company didn't have a favorite console and that it would continue to develop titles for all the platforms available. But he then went on to say that the Xbox 360 was a very easy console to develop for, and that the team had a lot of fun during the creation of The Last Remnant.
"If there's something that a particular platform can do that the game really needs to take advantage of then it may end up being an exclusive title, but otherwise the producers or the development teams don't have a particular favorite platform, so there isn't really anything to stop us from just going multiplatform in the future. The 360 is an easy platform to make games for. The dev environment and the dev kit and everything they've released, those were really dev friendly, so it was quite a lot of fun to work on the 360 version from a development point of view."
Some very interesting statements that, although they do make the PS3 users less worried, also bring a smile to the faces of the Xbox 360 owners.