Blue Dragon

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Hironobu Sakaguchi

Interview: Topping Final Fantasy

Words: Andy Robinson, CVG UK

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How did Blue Dragon do in Japan from your point of view?

Sakaguchi: I believe that despite the install base in Japan prior to Blue Dragon being released - which wasn't great - I believe that Blue Dragon has become the key console sales-driver for Xbox 360.

It's attaching over 45 percent and that's really amazing, it's never been done like this before. I believe that it can push the console and that Lost Odyssey will help as well. Maybe Halo 3 will push the install base in Japan too.

Do you think Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are going to impact the 360's performance in Japan?

Sakaguchi: Sure. Look at Blue Dragon - pretty much half of the Xbox 360 gamers in Japan have Blue Dragon in their hands because it's an RPG nation and we've got a great game that really has an appeal to RPG gamers not only in Japan but around the world. The impact is great in Japan and hopefully it's going to be even greater across the world.

The same thing with Lost Odyssey; it's has a massive appeal to experience-seekers who love great RPGs with a great storyline. Our expectations are big.

You recently expanded the Japanese game with new difficulty levels. What are your future plans for download content?

Sakaguchi: You know very well what's going on! So Japan has a set of three downloadable contents planned for post-launch and that's also what we'll be doing in North America and Europe. We'll be rolling out downloadable content over the course of four to five months post-release.

The last of which is a about multiple, randomized patterns in the game which means that each time you enter a new dungeon you actually see a different pattern, a different set of characters, enemies and environment.

So it's going to be really massive content in addition to what we already have. We've got great content coming online.

Seeing as you appear to already have English voices in the game, are you aiming for more of a simultaneous worldwide release for Lost Odyssey?

Sakaguchi: Right now the voice recording session is taking place in English - lip-sync is actually in harmony with that. So the Japanese dub version is actually going to follow the English lip-syncing.

So Japanese will actually see kind of like Hollywood movies that they see in Japan where characters actually speak English and they see the dubbed versions with the subtitles.

With respect to the release plans, the current plan is for this game to be released simultaneously including Europe - so great news for you guys! We're shooting for the holiday this year - It's really going to be a global title.