New Final Fantasy XIV Environments: High Fantasy

The way Square-Enix is talking about FFXIV, you’d think the game will hit store shelves before FFIII. But this won’t happen until the moon grows a beard, so we’re taking all we can get from the MMORPG whilst we impatiently wait.

This time around we got some new images and an 8 minute video to quench your thirst. I see a castle with great bridges, a tree hut, gloomy looking mountain range and a rich green field.

There will also be character races, which we got from Famitsu:

Hyuran: The greatest population of Eorzea, split into midlanders and highlanders. Lalafell: The intelligent, small-body farming community that came from islands in the southern seas. Roegadyn: These are the big-body sea-goers from the northern seas. Elezen: The race that once ruled Eorzea. They once fought the invading Hyuran, but now live in a peaceful coexistence. The four new job categories of FFXIV include fighter, sorcerer, gatherer, and crafter. The subcategories run the gamut from swordsman and archer for fighters to blacksmith and cook for crafters.

Final Fantasy XIV will release for the PS3 and PC late in 2010. enjoy this video.

08/06/09 Ernice Gilbert

Shu Yoshida: “I almost feel like we’re in the launch year of the Playstation 3...”

In the September issue of Playstation: The Official Magazine, Sony’s President of Worldwide Studios made time to answer some questions, from the oft mentioned 10-year cycle, to the importance of Gran Turismo making it’s debut on the PSP.

PTOM: as we sit here three years into a 10-year cycle, what’s your overall feel of what’s been achieved so far, and are we where you envisioned we’d be at this point?

Yoshida: “From the content standpoint you can see from the games we’re releasing this year and next year that developers are getting much more comfortable with the hardware and taking more and more advantage of it.” “So I think we have come to the point that we’re now confident in saying that we meant what we said when we launched PS3 that we had more hardware power [than other systems].” “On the network side, we announced Playstation Network with PS3, and obviously day one we didn’t have too much and too many services, but every year we’re adding more and more content and our games are taking more and more advantage of the network capabiliteis.”

“So I almost feel like we’re in the launch year of the Playstation 3 in terms of how we can differentiate it from the last generation, we’re still at the starting point and we’re still adding to our install base as and we’re looking to expand our user base. And we just added the motion controller to help broaden our reach.”

Yoshida also said that the Japanese market clearly had problems adapting to the PS3’s technology in part because of the successful portable market in Japan, but that situation has long been laid to rest with Japanese devs bringing out games like, Grand Turismo, Final Fantasy and The last Guardian.

Mr. Yoshida had lots to say about the imminent PSPgo set to release on October 1st 2009. But his main source of happiness is to know that Grand Turismo will be coming to PSP.

Be sure to pick up the magazine when it hit store shelves in August.

07/31/09 Ernice Gilbert