But 360 is an easy platform to make games for, says The Last Remnant director.
Producers and development teams at Final Fantasy XIII publisher/developer Square Enix "don't have a particular favourite platform", the director on upcoming RPG The Last Remnant has revealed.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com during a trip to Tokyo to check out the title, director Hiroshi Takai, whose credits include Legend of Mana, the Romancing SaGa trilogy and PS2 launch title The Bouncer, reinforced the company's commitment to multi-platform development with its high-profile role-playing games, but said that the 360 is an "easy" platform to develop on, and revealed that The Last Remnant team had "quite a lot of fun" with it.
Square Enix has down the years been a predominantly PlayStation exclusive developer, with its showcase Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles appearing on Sony's consoles only from the late 90s.
However, in recent months the famed Japanese company has changed that perception somewhat by supporting Microsoft's Xbox 360 extensively. At E3 in July Square Enix stunned the gaming world by taking to the stage during Microsoft's press conference to announce that Final Fantasy XIII would also be coming to the Xbox 360 in Western markets.
While The Last Remnant is planned as a multiplatform title, it is being released on the Xbox 360 first, this Thursday, with no date announced for the PS3 or PC versions. Infinite Undiscovery, released earlier this year, was a 360 exclusive, and Star Ocean: The Last Hope, planned for release next year, will also be a 360 exclusive.
When asked if, going forward, Square Enix will be making all of its 'next-gen' games multiplatform, Takai-san said: "If there's something that a particular platform can do that the game really needs to take advantage of then it may end up being an exclusive title, but otherwise the producers or the development teams don't have a particular favourite platform, so there isn't really anything to stop us from just going multiplatform in the future."
He added: "The 360 is an easy platform to make games for. The dev environment and the dev kit and everything they've released, those were really dev friendly, so it was quite a lot of fun to work on the 360 version from a development point of view."
What do you think of Takai-san's comments? Let us know below.
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ROLL ON STAR OCEAN!
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They have spent the last 10 years creating a worldwide team of first party talent to not only make games but the tech that drives the system. There is something to be said for the quality in those titles as they are the best reason to own a PS3. Now being brutally honest Sony's vision right now is a bit short sighted as big first party titles take a lot of time to make and you need 3rd party exclusives as well as 3rd party multi plat titles to fill the gap between big releases. Problem is that right now Japan is struggling with the current gen technology in particular PS3, and outside of big companies like Capcom it's a massive undertaking so most companies can't afford to pour all their resources into on console without some financial backing, otherwise believe me the Japanese would not even consider developing for 360 due to it's current market share in Japan.
Microsoft realized this rift forming and made the offer to bank role some of their titles in addition to getting FF13 in the west. I will bet anything Sony and Square spoke about financial backing for FF13, which given Sony's financial situation and all the money they are pouring into 1st party development they just did not see the advantage in paying Square to make a game it was already making .
You also need to factor in Square's position on the matter, if they can't get at least 50% of their invenstment back from Sony, what if FF13 launches and while doing spectacularly does not do as well as it needs to to make a profit or break even? Also given how big of a team is needed for next gen development it's easy to see how the learning cure the PS3 has is limiting Squares teams, hence why Last Remnant uses the Unreal Engine 3, though you can blame Unreal for the PS3's delay of Last Remnant.
Still I think you will see Square support PS3 more evenly with 360 after White Knight and FF13 launch exclusively in Japan, but like it or not Square is multiplat and 360's sales numbers for Tales of Vesperia and Infinite Undiscovery are going to keep it that way.
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