Electronic Arts Inc. has reached an agreement with The9 Ltd. to buy a 19 percent stake in the Chinese online game operator for about $200 million, a local newspaper said on Saturday.

EA, the world's top video game publisher, and The9 have reached a basic agreement, Shanghai Securities News reported.

A representative from The9 was not immediately available for comment.

Shanghai-based The9 also obtained the exclusive right to run EA's casual game FIFA Online in China at the end of March, the newspaper added.
» Read More 

Russ tells of console sales and other RPG deals as he begins, "September may have a lot of games coming out for it, so it is a good thing the prices of the 360 and PS3 dropped. Plus you still might be able to grab a decent computer during the back to school sales. Gaming triple play ahoy!"
» Read More 

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.
» Read More 

A group of teenagers from Texas called "The Speed Gamers" are attempting to complete the entire Final Fantasy series in only a week, while taking donations for ACT Today, an organization to help support families affected by Autism.

(From their front page)

TheSpeedGamers have been streaming video game marathons for over a year to raise money for various charities. In total they have raised over $32,000 dollars and played 11 marathons.

TheSpeedGamers are based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, but have members from around the world.
» Read More 

The collection includes soundtracks from The Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X and more, and will each launch...
» Read More 

Every Final Fantasy story is set in a different world. This of course means, every compilation features different locations and environments. The environments in every Final Fantasy are thus different from each other, as they reflect the themes and ideas of the story, as well as the emotions involved in the story at the time you encounter them in a game for the first time. Of course this is helped with the oh-so-magic use of music...

Continuing with our Top 5 Season We've compiled our top 5 iconic Final Fantasy locations which can be found following. Do you agree with our choices? If not what would you change in the list? (Please note this article contains Spoilers)
» Read More 

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!
» Read More 

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?
» Read More 

This is the world's first WORKING PS2 emulator! PCSX2 0.9.2 can play games such as Final Fantasy X! I have been waiting a long time for a working PS2 emulator, and it was worth the wait! See the screenshots page too for evidence.
» Read More 

The PS2 hits get a cheap reissue in Japan.
» Read More