Final Fantasy XIII Compromised to Please 360 Owners

[Kitacular]

I wonder why they didn't just stick it on multiple discs, like Blue Dragon.

 

[Spygon]

im a 360 owner and i wasnt bothered by having multi disk ff13 who would?.As the only reason somebody could come up with is it breaks flow sorry but what? as long as you dont have to change disk in the middle of the important bits it would never break flow.

They have done it with all the older and i would say better final fantasys and it worked fine.I feel there some else behind this.

 

[Da_Schwartz]

They have done it with all the older and i would say better final fantasys and it worked fine.I feel there some else behind this.

I thought this too.. but then i figured that Square wouldn't exactly throw micorsoft under the bus as a scapegoat to save face on whatever dev problem they may be having.

And as one more rant look. Square just shouldn't of bothered with the game. Square shouldn't be holding the 360's hand telling it that "everything will be alright. We'll make sure ur big black stepbrother shares." U cant compromise the gfx, and flow of a series that thrives on it. FF is known for its look artistic cutscenes and pseudo open world feel. I could care less about the subtitle thing. i mean lets be realistic here for a cross platform release that is a fair compromise. I don't care thats it's on both platforms, i dont care if it was going to be better on the ps3. But downgrading is unacceptable.

This would be like xbl dropping live and going more basic because psn is free... No i pay for live because it is better. Just like how i payed more money for my ps3 and by now, years later i expect to be getting my moneys worth and being able to play games that push the envelope and show what it can do. LIke we were told ff would. It's that simple. I also don't see why they can't release the 360 version a bit later at its own standards. Or maybe even a gfx overhaul patch like they did with ghostbusters for the ps3, to bring it up to par with the 360 version. Unless this "compromise" is too big for a simple solution to fix. Who knows..oh well. Looks like White Knight Chronicles is back on top of my list for most anticipated rpg. ::shrug:: Hopefully we're all just overreacting a bit and it's not as bad as it sounds.

 

[DanDeFool]

What adds even more sting to this is that (in America, at least) Final Fantasy XIII is probably going to do pretty poorly on the X360, or at least not as good as it will on the PS3. I say this mostly because I agree with Yahtzee on the point that the X360's target audience is mostly fans of console FPS's, like Halo 3 and CoD 4, and Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Most JRPG fans, in my estimation, are either sticking with the PS2 for now or will have opted for the PS3.

Actually, the X360's choice of high-density format, the ill-fated HD-DVD, is probably going to plague the system until the day it becomes obsolete or until the patent on Blu-Ray runs out and they can start distributing their own readers without having to pay Sony royalties up the ass. I've read news articles of at least one other developer (id Software) complaining about having to compromise on content and load times because of the media capacity and because Microsoft refuses to allow them to install anything on the X360s hard disk. Oh well, I guess Microsoft didn't spend untold millions clawing their way onto the console market just so they could NOT bully developers into dumbing down their content so that it works on their retarded little polio victim of a console.

 

[Da_Schwartz]

Agreed. shooters are to 360 as rpg's are to ps3. It's their weapons of choice.

 

[SlasherX]

How does it feel to know that you wasted all your money on that giant black paper weight and now no one acually cares about it and wants a xbox 360 since the only good exclusive title on it is metal gear solid and what you thought would have been ff 13 but its on the xbox...... and we are screwing it up for you and your blue ray,burns doesnt it? i mean really sony should just pack up and leave it only sells well in japan and then all it has is jrpgs which mostly suck exept for ffa, which is on the xbox and flame me as much as you like you ps3 fanboy japanophiles

 

[DanDeFool]

just to throw this into the mix as it was brought up earlier. On launch, the 80gig version with all the card readers and such, was 600$, with 8% tax that's 648$. No game, just the system and a controller. with a game that's over 700$. This is exactly why it didn't sell right off the bat.

Not to mention that Sony was selling this god-forsaken behemoth at a LOSS when it first came out, if you can believe that. Probably why those things were so damned hard to get during the first production run.

Maybe it's not such a bad choice for Square after all; maybe we'll actually be seeing more of this in the future. Since the X360 is, and always has been, more economical than the PS3 in terms of the unit cost and the number of titles available for it, it's gotten to be much more ubiquotous than the PS3. Devs will opt to dumb down their titles just so they actually have people to sell their games to. Maybe, in spite of it's retarded polio victim-ness, the X360 will emerge as the biggest success of this console generation because it was best able to fit the gaming console paradigm without doing too much or too little.

Of course, the PS3 is about a half-generation ahead of both the X360 and the Wii (more like a whole generation in the latter case), so it's probably going to be a good long-term investment. I susupect that within the next two years there will be quite a few PS3-exclusive titles that are so good looking and have so much depth and content that the X360 is going to look pretty crappy by comparison.

 

[tehroc]

ff13 stopped looking appealing about the time FFX came out.

Lol.... that's a good way to incurr some escapist wrath.
From what I've observed, X is thought to be one of the best.

Spoiler

ayi yi yi

voice acting for the lol?

I dunno how this game is so acclaimed with such bad voice acting. It's quite literally the worst voice acting possible in any media format.

 

[Bob_F_It]

This decision makes little sense. You are making a game worse, and for what? Equality between systems? That's going to devalue the choice of platform for the worsened game, and of course you're hiding the potential of the game that you already had at one point.

Valve had a better idea when they were struggling with the PS3 (other than trying harder); they just stuck to what they had already mastered, not worsen the work on the 360 (and maybe PC).

 

[FinalHeart95]

I don't care if they're fair, and I'm a 360 owner. I'd rather have somebody enjoy the japanese voiceover/english subtitle combo than nobody.

 

[MercurySteam]

If anything, you should blame Sony for making their system so damn boring that people would rather deal with a system that explodes on a regular basis.

Why hello fanboy, how you doing? Been playing any Halo lately? Golly, it's great, being narrow-minded and all, isn't it!

We aren't here to start a console war, hell starting this thread was a bad idea, especially since you turn troll so fast.

 

[MercurySteam]

Who cares if it doesn't have Japanese, do you really need to play the game in a language you can't understand (with subs). Besides the PC version of Gears had a deleted chapter on it that wasn't featured in the 360 version. Compromise means we're all still civilised. Challenging compromise means you want to make war where there's peace. Seriously, there are better things to rant about.

don't be mad at microsoft for this, be mad Square for taking the easy way out.

Blaming people doesn't do much. Square Enix and Microsoft are both great companies. And that chunk of text sounds to be written by someone with something against 360's.

 

[daz_O_O]

Holy fuck you guys whine a lot at nothing!
You lose Japanese voices - so cry me a river! I guess you have to play the game and listen to voices in a language you all understand and speak regularly, darn!

And the whole thing about not being able to travel anywhere until the end? What makes you think Square-Enix designed it to be any different from that from the start? It worked for all their most successful games - including FFX which was ON ONE DISC.

Nothing has changed from this. We all get to play what could be a great game and we all get to play it how it was meant to be played.

 

[Hazy]

How does it feel to know that you wasted all your money on that giant black paper weight and now no one acually cares about it and wants a xbox 360 since the only good exclusive title on it is metal gear solid and what you thought would have been ff 13 but its on the xbox...... and we are screwing it up for you and your blue ray,burns doesnt it? i mean really sony should just pack up and leave it only sells well in japan and then all it has is jrpgs which mostly suck exept for ffa, which is on the xbox and flame me as much as you like you ps3 fanboy japanophiles

You're lost, let me point you in the right [http://www.youtube.com/] direction [http://www.gametrailers.com/]. We don't care for that kind of talk here at the Escapist.
Do not turn this into a flame war. Even if it devolves into one, do not aide it.

 

[squid5580]

Why hello fanboy, how you doing? Been playing any Halo lately? Golly, it's great, being narrow-minded and all, isn't it!

Because not a single 360 player on the face of the planet has ever decided to diversify their console collection. Obviously, since I support the 360, I couldn't possibly have blown $680 on a glorified DVD player and been bored to tears by LBP, Resistance 1&2, Killzone 2, then decided to cut my losses and stick with the consistent winner. Nope, it's obvious, since I spoke favourably about the 360, I've never seen a PS3 and must have had help just to figure out the spelling of the thing. Golly, it's great, being narrow-minded and all, isn't it!

I'm confused about something. If you are so eager and zealous in your love of the 360 and hatred of the PS3. How did you come by a PSN account with trophies? And, I'm pretty sure the PS3 was never $680. Not in the U.S. anyway.

Another point I feel obligated to bring up. I know that there are RPGs on the 360. But are there actually JRPGs on the 360? I'm sure there's probably one or two. But my point is, most JRPG players don't usually own 360s. And most 360 owners are usually not into JRPGs. So why penalize PS3 owners who probably are a hundred times more interested in FFXIII then so that you can appeal to 360 owners who probably won't even buy the game because it isn't big, tough and/or manly?

Disclaimer: If you are a 360 owner who does not fit the above stereotype, please disregard that portion of the post. And please understand that such viewpoints are simply the result of many years of research and study of the common fanboy.

Wow I think someone is still lost in the next gen. Umm the real question is how many rpgs are on the PS3? And to call it even lets just go by the exclusives. PS3 in NA has Folklore (Jrpg?) and Valkyrie Chronicles (I guess we can call it an rpg right?). Did I miss any. Any on the PSN that I may have missed?

Now lets look over at the anti rpg machine called the 360. We have Lost odyssey, Blue Dragon, Infinite Undiscovery, Enchanted Arms. Phantasy Star Universe and the Last Remnant. And this is just a short list of RPGs I have played.

The PS2 was the king of RPGs the PS3 has got alot of work to do to regain that crown. I guess 360 owners aren't quite the same as xbox owners. Especially since the amount of sales the 360 has there must be more than 1 ex PS2 fanboy out there who went to the other side. Well one other than me.

 

[Whistler777]

Holy fuck you guys whine a lot at nothing!
You lose Japanese voices - so cry me a river! I guess you have to play the game and listen to voices in a language you all understand and speak regularly, darn!

If you were anything more than an uncultured idiot, you'd know that anime fans prefer Japanese audio with English subtitles. It leaves the original dialogue intact and lets the player avoid the terrible English dubbing.

 

[shadow skill]

It's called a Videogame for a reason. If graphics are not important for an inherently visual medium why not just make a damned pure text RPG? It's like someone creating a Graphic Novel with an awesome story and shit drawings. If the drawing is gonna be shitty wouldn't it be better to drop the graphics and stick to the novel? In a game of this kind where the gameplay is largely stat/menu driven the graphics are even more important for telling the story because the presentation is what brings the player in and keeps the player engaged.

I'm sorry but I must address this, even though it's off topic, many graphic novels use less than stellar art work and carry along a brilliant story (Johnny The Homicidal Maniac for one) and there are tons of games out there that aren't AAA titles that tell wonderful stories with less than stellar graphics. If I want to look at pretty things I can got to a Museum or BustyAsianBeauties.com or heaven forbid, spend my free time watching tech demos. While graphics are important, they are not a deal breaker.

I agree that presentation is what draws a player in, but that isn't the same as hi-end graphics, and I believe once you're in it's the story that keeps you engaged. Peggle is presented well, and keeps people engaged for scarily long periods of time, yet it's little more that bubble bobble or bust a move. And there are tons of less than stellar looking titles that do well on PSN and X-box LIVE. Some of these are retro-games just re-sold, so nostalgia has a certain effect here too. But there are plenty of new games, that look dated but it has no effect on how they play.

And a lot of hi-end graphics now just mean lots of Greys, browns and blacks...and that's a argument all to itself...

(And before anyone hoots, bustyasianbeauties.com is a domain name owned by WB, I'm not pushing porn here.)

So what reason does anyone really have to buy a graphic novel with poor drawing that invariably damage the story itself (The visuals are integral to actually telling the story.) over a graphic novel with an equally good story and better visuals? Hence my point that someone doing a graphic novel with not so great visuals and a great story is better off dropping the weaker visuals and writing a text novel and focusing on the stronger aspect of the work.

It's called a Videogame for a reason. If graphics are not important for an inherently visual medium why not just make a damned pure text RPG? It's like someone creating a Graphic Novel with an awesome story and shit drawings. If the drawing is gonna be shitty wouldn't it be better to drop the graphics and stick to the novel? In a game of this kind where the gameplay is largely stat/menu driven the graphics are even more important for telling the story because the presentation is what brings the player in and keeps the player engaged.

I agree to an extent, graphics to have to be decent - but I disagree they need as much emphasis as you claim. Graphics do not need to be great to tell a good story - they just need to be functional.

That is only true when a game (Or any other visual media.) are not competing with other products. People will ask themselves why they should buy FF13 over a whole host of games that may arguably have better stories and better gameplay and possibly better graphics than FF13.

Let's take Wet for example judging from the demo the game suffers from very wooden animations more than anything else. Sure it is competent but why should people who like these kinds of games spend money on Wet with its decidedly lackluster animations that don't make you really feel cool over something that does animate well like a God of War, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or Bayonetta? All of these games animate far better than Wet?

 

[squid5580]

Why hello fanboy, how you doing? Been playing any Halo lately? Golly, it's great, being narrow-minded and all, isn't it!

Because not a single 360 player on the face of the planet has ever decided to diversify their console collection. Obviously, since I support the 360, I couldn't possibly have blown $680 on a glorified DVD player and been bored to tears by LBP, Resistance 1&2, Killzone 2, then decided to cut my losses and stick with the consistent winner. Nope, it's obvious, since I spoke favourably about the 360, I've never seen a PS3 and must have had help just to figure out the spelling of the thing. Golly, it's great, being narrow-minded and all, isn't it!

You failed to mention you also bashed the 360 in the original post. Congrats on being so narrowminded that you can see the faults of both systems.

 

[Deathsong17]

Shame that this will cause more hate between the two consoles, if there wasn't enough already.

I don't think this will make me hate the xbox any more than I already do, because this isn't microsofts fault. Microsoft made a console with what they had. Sony developed the blu-ray player, so they had it available, microsoft didn't. Microsoft and their Xbox 360 deserve no more aire than they did before.

HOWEVER, Sony seems hellbent on continuing this never ending stream of disappointments. Final Fantasy has never been a multiplatform game, and it sure as hell wasn't a bunch of xbox fanboys clamouring to get a port, since most of them seem to bash it as much as sony fanboys diss on Halo. This is all just a marketing ploy by Sony to try to rake in more cash, and while it might work in the short term, overall it's going to result in a shotty game(A blu-ray disk holds, like, 60 gigs, and a dual layer dvd holds about 9. Tell me that nothing is going to change except the japanese voices) and a lot of disgruntled and disenfranchised fans.

Personally, this is just more reason to boycott Sony as a whole. I just bought Rock Band and made sure to get it from Gamestop used so Sony didn't get a dime of my money, and got a third party guitar controller. I'll get FF XIII the same way, but my expectations of it are going to be far, far lower now that I know they crucified the game just to sell a few more copys.

Edit: Rereading that I think I might have mentioned Sony instead of Square, but I'm not entirely sure they're different entities, so I think it works either way.

Well considering that Squeenix origanly made games for Nintendo, and that Sony would never let a prestigious exclusive like FF slip by for money they won't make, you just unleashed a lot of hate on Sony because they didn't do anything.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Um... it seems odd that one of the reasons people payed 200+ extra bucks is taken away for "fairness".

Precisely correct my good man. These people cutting things down for "fairness" is stupid.