Comments on: Square Enix: Final Fantasy XIII on 360 not a “betrayal”

By: airdom

airdom — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:40:27 +0000

@ cachucha

”Are there really people stupid enough to consider a multi-platform title a “betrayal”?”

of course there are TONS lol.

By: cachucha

cachucha — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:17:17 +0000

Are there really people stupid enough to consider a multi-platform title a “betrayal”? Then again, this *is* the internet…

I dont think only people on the internet would consider it as a betrayal lol, I know hardcore console fanboys that wont even bother to look on the internet for console news.

By: Blerk

Blerk — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:16:47 +0000

Why wouldn’t they translate it and port it at the same time? It’s not like one impacts on the other.

By: airdom

airdom — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:12:01 +0000

This post was so obvious, sure to bring some hate! gets people talking at least!

By: ecu

ecu — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:08:34 +0000

They said it in the press interview immediately after the conference.

By: Gekidami

Gekidami — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:02:13 +0000

When’d they say that then?

By: Psychotext

Psychotext — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:58:47 +0000

Why do you think they wont when that’s what they’ve said they’re doing?

By: Gekidami

Gekidami — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:57:07 +0000

Why does everyone think that Square will translate AND port it at the same time…?

By: Blerk

Blerk — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:37:06 +0000

People seem to forget that it’s not just the text. Not only do you have to rerecord the voiceovers in English, you’ve then got to redo all the lip-synching, which often means tweaking the timings of the scenes too. I’m sure it’s all kinds of hell – we have a hard enough time localising a relatively simple(!) product with a fixed amount of plain text.

By: Psychotext

Psychotext — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:33:50 +0000

DrDamn: As long as you could read / understand it, that would be fine. If you totalled up all that localisation time you’d be fluent.

Quiiick: So they delayed the US etc versions 6 months for the sake of it?

By: Quiiick

Quiiick — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:29:12 +0000

… sorry, I meant: They don’t do voice recordings for the localisations OTHER THAN ENGLISH.

By: DrDamn

DrDamn — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:28:21 +0000

@Michael O’Connor
“Sony owned shares in Square long before that article you posted.”

Reference?

By: Quiiick

Quiiick — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:26:54 +0000

C’mon, it’s plain text they have to translate!
They don’t do voice recordings for the localisations. This only takes a few weeks, not more, for a hand full of workers. Weeks not months!

If they released the US/EU versions 6 months later (like they did in the past) it doesn’t mean it took them 6 months for the translations.

By: DrDamn

DrDamn — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:26:52 +0000

Good grasp of Japanese (reading and writing) takes a huge amount of time – even for kids.

Obviously PS3 owners will only have to wait for the US release rather than wait for the Euro one.

By: Psychotext

Psychotext — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:23:20 +0000

Blerk: Yeah, I have no idea on those tbh… I just remember them being a long time.

Probably long enough to get a good grasp of Japanese.

By: Spiral

Spiral — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:19:32 +0000

Ah. Thought they seemed a bit low. I’m betting Christmas 2009 for the US, Feb 2010 for us.

By: Blerk

Blerk — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:09:24 +0000

Those are the translation times for the US versions, though. You’ve got to at least double them for the European release.

By: morriss

morriss — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:01:36 +0000

I was 100% serious.

By: Psychotext

Psychotext — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:55:33 +0000

“If previous Final Fantasies are anything to go by, it’ll take longer to do the translation than to knock out the 360 version of the code”

Based on a post at another site… they went something like this:

FF: 2 years
FFIV: 4 years
FFV: 2 years
FFVI: 6 months
FFVII: 9 months
FFVIII: 9 months
FFIX: 6 months
FFX: 6 months
FFXI: 2 years
FFXII: 6 months

So the question is how good the are the Square coders, and how good is their multiplatform engine? Not to mention how many random contractors will MS throw at them… Could it be done in 6 months from the release of the game? Assuming they’re starting soon, and the game will release mid 2009 at the earliest… sure, I don’t see any reason it would be impossible.

Unlike morriss, I don’t reckon this will be better on the 360 though.

By: patlike

patlike — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:53:44 +0000

N4G’s a shadow of its former self, really. Still fast, though.

It’s so dead today. Deader than dead. It’s, like, dead.

By: DaMan

DaMan — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:21:10 +0000

“Oh god Pat, please don’t let this place become like N4G.”
anyone remembers n4g when it was PS3Today? it’s news had 500-1000 comments.

By: Blerk

Blerk — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:17:53 +0000

Oh morriss. Now you’ve probably summoned Shatner.

By: morriss

morriss — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:00:48 +0000

I reckon the 360 version will be better than the PS3 version.

Discuss.

By: DaMan

DaMan — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:59:52 +0000

so they would be developing Xenogears and Yoshi rpg at the same time? yeah, a great decision.

and anyway they weren’t such a big company back then, they didn’t have enough people.

By: Michael O'Connor

Michael O'Connor — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:58:39 +0000

“how? for starters, please explain how cgs would fit into it? 50 cartridges?”

Obviously it would have been a completely different game.

You do realise we’re both arguing the same point, right? *laughs*

Think more FF: Crystal Chronicles than FFXII.

It was Nitendo’s own fault at the end of the day for jumping into the foray too late with an inherently backwards system.

By: DaMan

DaMan — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:51:46 +0000

Perhaps Sony shares made them choose Playstation instead of Saturn, but my point was that they moved from Nintendo to Sony because of the hardware, while making FFXIII multiplatform is absolutely a matter of business.

and Saturn would be a bad platform to choose. it was the worst console Sega ever made, weakest of the three (PS1, N64 and Saturn) and hardest to develop for.

“You can guarantee they would have just made a game that suited the N64’s capabilities if it was the format that would have made them the most profit.”

how? for starters, please explain how cgs would fit into it? 50 cartridges? or would they make another Super Mario RPG?

Square had talks with Nintendo back then, they’ve told them the games won’t be possible if N64 won’t have a CD-ROM. it was N own stubborness that lead to FF games appearing on another platform.

By: Blerk

Blerk — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:44:40 +0000

It’s pretty well known that Nintendo and Square had some sort of private falling-out which lead to Sony nipping in with a mutli-game deal to get them to defect, btw. Without that disagreement things could have turned out very different indeed.

By: Blerk

Blerk — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:43:02 +0000

October 2001 was when Sony made their investment, about 19% of the company. That’s now worth significantly less since they merged with Enix, 8% or something iirc.

By: Michael O'Connor

Michael O'Connor — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:42:34 +0000

“I thought Sony only bought a load of shares in Square some time after FFVII.”

You completely ignored the main point made BTW. FFVII wasn’t release on the PS1 “because it couldn’t be done on the N64″

Sony owned shares in Square long before that article you posted.

FFVII was made around the PS1′s capability. If the N64 had been the bonafide leading format at the time by a *long* mile ; PS3 and 360 are basically neck and neck right now.

You can guarantee they would have just made a game that suited the N64′s capabilities if it was the format that would have made them the most profit.

The N64 and PS1 were also extremely different consoles architecturally. While the PS3 and 360 have their differences, it’s a much smaller difference.

By: DrDamn

DrDamn — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:41:58 +0000

If fact yes, it wasn’t until after the failure of FF The Spirits Within that Sony put some cash in for 19% of the company. The switch from Nintendo was more about money hats and possibly Nintendo’s greed / costs for development.

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/10/business/fi-55454