While Sony have put all their shiny eggs in one big Blu basket, Square/Enix have listened to their grandmothers – this excerpt comes from a Wall Street Journal Online article that’s kind of a background to the PS3 launch.
Square Enix Co. used to make showcase games like Kingdom Hearts and the latest installment in the Final Fantasy series only for the PlayStation 2. This time it is planning to be more evenhanded, and it has announced two games for each of the three new-generation consoles. It still plans to develop the most advanced Final Fantasy game for the PlayStation 3. But it hasn’t yet decided which console will get Kingdom Hearts, a popular game involving Disney characters.
“We don’t want the PlayStation 3 to be the overwhelming loser, so we want to support them,” says Michihiro Sasaki, senior vice president of Square Enix. ” But we don’t want them to be the overwhelming winner either, so we can’t support them too much.”
Square have swapped allegiances before, but the manner in which they are hedging their bets at this time doesn’t indicate to me that they’ve simply lost faith in Sony, but that their ideal situation would be for the Wii, 360 and PS3 each to have a fair share of the market, with different consumers attracted to each on its merits. That way they could design their games to take best advantage of each system, and to appeal to each fanbase [customer-base sounds a bit too materialistic for gamers, doesn’t it? we prefer to think of ourselves as fans so we can ignore our addiction-fuelled consumption] – Square’s being smart here, but it’s still a blow for Sony.
But then, Final Fantasy VIII was the game that convinced me to buy a Playstation, and Final Fantasy X was the first game I bought for my PS2. Neither of those games were launch titles, btw. But the Wii60 combo platter has Oblivion & Zelda, which is a hellish tasty treat.
Constitution Hill 