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The original Final Fantasy XIV crashed and burned, and was shut down a couple months back. Even before that, though, the reboot of the Final Fantasy XIV universe, subtitled "A Realm Reborn," was announced and put into alpha. The buzz around the new version is pretty positive so far, with the proposed changes and media released to the public all being met with reactions that I would categorize as "generally pleased."

That uptick in user opinion hit its first peak yesterday, as the XIV team at Squenix released an extended Realm Reborn trailer. This trailer is not completely new, but it must be said, it is one of the most visually impressive CG scenes I've seen Squenix ever do. I spent a lot of time watching it and wishing that it was actually a scene from a Final Fantasy Tactics sequel, given the varied job classes and armored chocobos on display throughout. Having that sort of FFT feel even makes me want to try it out a bit, and I've never had any interest in an MMO at all.

Perhaps I could try it out a bit, in fact - as part of this information release yesterday, applications for the Western beta phase were also opened. As mentioned before, there will be four beta phases in all, with the first phase starting in Japan only sometime around the middle of February. The current deployment schedule allows for between seven and eighteen weeks across all four phases; the short end of that window seems really aggressive and pretty unrealistic to me, while eighteen weeks seems more managable and would result in an early-summer release. Only the final two phases will include gamers outside of Japan, and only the final phase will include PlayStation 3 gamers. The final phase will also allow characters created to be imported into the released game.

If you're interested in having a go at this, there are signup pages for both North America and Europe. Good luck to all those who apply!

Source: IGN

The festivities surrounding the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy didn't stop just with the official Squenix push. Along with the tributes and news posted at sites like ours, and the thousands of tweets and Facebook posts congratulating the company, one consortium came together to go a little further. The fansites Nova Crystallis, RPGSite, and UFF got together to create a massive fanzine with retrospectives, interviews, and lots of imagery to celebrate the event, and the results came out very nicely indeed.

Beyond retrospectives of the games and some of the ancillary Final Fantasy materials, there are profiles of many of the biggest Square names over the years, feature articles, opinion pieces, and even a few interviews. The magazine came out to nearly 130 pages, and is available in a variety of formats so that everyone can enjoy it. It's a really impressive piece of work and everyone involved should be commended for it. Hey, I'm not even going to be (too) bitter about the fact that we didn't get invited to be a part of it - it's really worth it that these folks stepped forward to do something so cool.

The full PDF is a shade over 40MB - there's no reason not to check it out.

Source: Nova Crystallis

First off, some sentimental news: the Playstation 2 has finally come to the end of its sales lifespan in Japan. The system will still be available in many regions worldwide, however. If you're reading this in Brazil, for instance, the PS2 was only first made available to you in 2009. Desculpa.

Speaking of the PS2, Square Enix's long-running MMO native to that system, Final Fantasy XI, will be getting yet another expansion on March 26th to the tune of $29.99. The expansion, however, will only be available to westerners on PC and Xbox. If you're interested in taking this opportunity to first start playing Square Enix's MMO that worked the first time, a bundle edition of the original game and the other four expansions will be made available as well.

Next up, super important news from FFXIV: A Realm Reborn: THERE ARE BABY BEHEMOTHS. If you're wondering why this is such fantastic news, it's only because you haven't yet clicked on the first source below. Seriously. Cutest things ever.

In more serious news concerning FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, Square Enix has released a timetable for beta testing and debugging. Beta will begin in February with the PC version only, with PS3 beta being added in later. The plan is divided into four phases, each of which involves an increased number of available worlds and accessible features. Each phase will last somewhere around three weeks, followed by a 1-2 week session of debugging. Take my word for it, it's a rather detailed plan.

Square Enix is preparing to introduce a new bonus for those in the Japanese Square Enix Members program: a browser-based game in which Members avatars fight against various enemies from the Final Fantasy series. As said, it appears to be Japan-only, but there's always the chance that we'll see it over here if it's successful.

Finally, some Lightning Returns: FFXIII news. Lightning has been and fought for a lot of things over the course of her trilogy. In a recent Famitsu interview, Lightning's final role was revealed: liberator. If that sounds a bit odd, given that she spent her first title overthrowing a couple gods and rejecting 'divine' missions, you aren't alone. Now, though, she's working for a good god, Bhunivelze, and her goal is not to destroy the world as a sacrifice but to save as many as possible from the impending destruction of the world (the thirteen days thing we've reported on previously), liberating them to a new world.

Source: Siliconera, Siliconera, Siliconera

Square Enix deployed their now-pretty-typical "hey, we released a new game" video yesterday to announce the worldwide release of Final Fantasy IV for iOS (yours for the low price of $16.99 US!).

The video is pretty standard fare, nothing particularly exciting if you've see the Nintendo DS version before; however, what has people talking is the last few seconds. If you watch to the end, you'll see a bit of crowing about a "Final Fantasy mobile revolution" and the Final Fantasy V logo. This appears to confirm that at least Final Fantasy V is coming to iOS sometime in the future, and the text below saying "and more..." would seem to imply that V is not the end. Final Fantasy VI would be the obvious "more" there, but could there be others?

Not only that, what might we see out of these? Will these be ports of SNES? Game Boy Advance? Could it even be a 3D treatment of each game, which has long been rumored but never executed? And, if it's the 3D option, will we see them also on the Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita? That would certainly be fairly revolutionary; oh, if only we knew. As of right now, we need to consider this tentative news, but it seems pretty clear that iOS users will at least be seeing Final Fantasy V sooner rather than later.

Source: Operation Rainfall

We can't even call this an FF anniversary post, seeing as this trailer was released early by accident. Luckily, it can still be found in a fan-uploaded version on the link posted below, among others.

The trailer opens up with Lightning in her new get-up, news of which we posted just two days ago, and with a brief monologue concerning the 'holy city,' which, as seems to be the case with all RPG holy cities, has spots of darkness.

Then, after "The Final Journey of Lightning" flashes on the screen a couple times, the trailer gets happy again! There's a fair bit of gameplay footage, showing a battle menu that has once again been tweaked but maintains much of the elements of its two predecessors. The audio is a slight remix of the battle theme from the original FFXIII. Wait, am I- getting nostalgic?

At the very end, we hear this game's application of the number 13: it is the number of days remaining to the world. Clocks are displayed formidably throughout the trailer as well. Both aspects are in keeping with the emphasis on time, as we first reported back in September.

Source: Siliconera

Since Josh overheated from all that newsposting this morning (he's an old man now, he tires easily!), I'm here to pick up with the barrage of news!

First up on the docket is the sad news: Square Enix is laying off a few employees from their office in LA. This shouldn't surprise anyone, given the financial reports we've heard, but the company insists that the layoffs will not impact the release of any games currently in development.

We've all probably been wondering: what's up with all these mobile releases all of a sudden? I certainly am, having had to write up a dozen of them in the past month. The answer? Profitability, unsurprisingly. I'll let Yoichi Wada speak for himself: "In HD games, we usually have a mixture of profitable and unprofitable titles, generating profit as a whole. As for our Social Gaming & Others [division], we only have very few titles that are unprofitable." Accordingly, Wada remarked that the company would increase its presence in the mobile/social gaming market. He was quick to reassure, however, that this would in no way compromise the company's interests in console gaming.

Next is a fun 'favorite character' quiz from the official SE Japanese fan forum. Everyone loves quizzes, yeah? In a surprise finish, Zack Fair (FFVII) came out on top, followed by Cloud Strife (FFVII). While this shouldn't surprise anyone, top ten finishers represented a fair number of games: Zidane from FFIX, Tidus from FFX, Squall from FFVIII, Bartz from FFV (what?), and Kain from FFIV rounded out the top seven. A character from the most recent FF title (FFXIII-2), Noel, came in at 11th, with Noctis, from the yet-unreleased FF Versus XIII, coming in at 19th.

Speaking of Versus XIII, we may soon find ourselves calling the title by a new name. The hint comes from the game's Japanese Amazon page, where it is now listed as "tentative name." We've seen FFXIII Agito take on a new name, and given that the FFXIII project seems to be wrapping up with the third installment in Lightning's story, this potential rebranding seems like a good idea. Will Versus XIII become the next main installment in the FF series? Who knows!

Finally, Japan's Jump magazine has provided us with the first images of Lightning's new getup for Lightning Returns: FFXIII. That's about all, but I'll be darned if she doesn't look more attractive with each title. Due for release sometime in 2013.

Check out Josh's newspost commemorating the anniversary, well-articulate as ever, from earlier today; to all facebook and twitter followers, be sure to check out the CoN homepage for the several other anniversary-related newsposts from the past few days!

Source: Joystiq, Just Use a Phoenix Down, Siliconera, Gamechup, SGCafe