411mania talks about this week's game releases. Highlights include Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Cursed Mountain, and Harvest Moon: Magical Melody.
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411mania talks about this week's game releases. Highlights include Demigod, Dokapon Journey, The Dark Spire, the Final Fantasy XIII Demo + Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete, and Air Conflicts.
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Three years after it came out in Japan, Square Enix will release Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII International as a value priced Ultimate Hits game on September 4. Don't get envious yet. Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII International is in actuality just the North America version of Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII. When Square Enix localized the game Vincent learned how to run faster, got a limit break item to transform instead of using his MP, and had a number of post game Extra Missions. The catch was online play via PlayOnline found in the original Japanese release was removed from the game.
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Dissidia Final Fantasy details have once again been spotted and this time, they're coming from Japanese game magazine Famitsu. the game's producer Tetsuya Nomura, director Takeshi Arakawa, and planning director Mitsunori Takahashi all sat down with the publication and answered a few questions.

First on the agenda was the question of why the game is taking so long to finish. The devs answered that the team doing it is pretty young and adjusting was one of the most time-consuming parts of development. As for how far along into completion the team has gone, they said they're at about 50 percent and that character models are almost completely sealed.

Plenty more at the source!
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Square Enix plans to release an international version of Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus on September 4, 2008 in Japan. The version is supposed to contain improvements over the regular version that's already released in Japan, but those improvements are probably the ones already applied to the North American version of the game.
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From NextGen Player:

"Hobby Star Marketing have announced the featured guests that will be appearing at this years Gaming Expo 2008 on August 22-24 in Toronto. The event is part of the larger Fan Expo Canada, a multigenre fan convention showcasing comic books, science fiction, anime, film/television and more.

The list of scheduled Gaming Expo 2008 featured guests includes:

- Jon Bates, Business Development & Strategic Marketing, Mindark / Entropia Universe

- John Meadows, writer of LOST video game for UBISOFT

- Johnny Yong Bosch, Nero in Devil May Cry 4

- Steven Jay Blum, Vincent Valentine in Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

- Michelle Ruff, Arioch in Drakengard

- Wendee Lee, Alyssa Ashcroft in Resident Evil Outbreak"

The Gaming Expo 2008 will also features three members from Mega64, as well as RPG Designer, Don Perrin, Authors Pieter VanHiel and Brand Robins, RPG Creator Jason Holmgren, and the Lead Developer at Firestorm Ink Games."
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Kotaku writes:

Square Enix honcho Yoichi Wada (above, left) is worried. Western game companies are doing really well! Meaning that competition is getting harder. Yet, Wada hopes to capitalise on the Western market, aiming to increase the ratio of overseas sales from its current 50 percent to 80 percent in the next three years. According to the exec:

"We face competition not only from Japanese videogame companies but from game companies worldwide. We also see some new players from outside the videogame industry coming in... Economies of scale and breadth of scope is getting important. It may be a business alliance or it may be us taking a stake in others, but we need to go beyond traditional Square Enix."

That business alliance sounds nice and all. But, how about stop calling everything Final Fantasy? Or make things other than RPGs? Or if you are going to make RPGs, why not make the games people have been asking for for the past decade?
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The Final Fantasy series gets its first in-your-face action game this August when Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII arrives. Set to fit another puzzle piece into the complex and ongoing saga of Final Fantasy VII, it offers up a whole new take on the series. That's evidenced by these new screenshots, which showcase the beguiling and sexy Rosso - as well as what demonic cover boy Vincent Valentine looked like in his past as a member of the Turks. His tenure as a member of the Shinra company's ... » Read More

Nobody expected Final Fantasy to become a shooter. And when it did, the lack of confidence seemed... justified. The Japanese version of the game showed that the developers, while great at transferring the brilliant world of Final Fantasy VII to the PS2 with its atmosphere intact, didn't quite understand how to make a tight and playable shooter. Well, somebody at Square Enix noticed the complaints. The English version of Dirge of Cerberus has been tweaked and modified for the tastes of US ... » Read More

Every gamer's taken a crack at Final Fantasy. The latest in the series, the long-awaited Final Fantasy XII, is set to debut later this year, maybe as the PlayStation 2's last massive classic. But today Square Enix, the company behind the series, is set to show that it has a lot more to offer than a single epic adventure. Final Fantasy XII ... » Read More

The frenzy surrounding PlayStation role-playing classic Final Fantasy VII continues. The US version of Dirge of Cerberus, the kinda-sorta sequel that puts a big ol' gun into your hand and lets you loose, is on its way. Today, Square Enix has let fly several new screens that highlight elements of the game we haven't seen before. This action game was an unexpected departure from the series' typical turn-based RPG style, but we're getting more used to the idea now that we've got our hands on it. ... » Read More