Square Enix has pulled out all the stops for Microsoft at this years E3.  After showing a CG trailer, it was displayed that Final Fantasy XIII will be released on the Xbox 360 at launch in North America and Europe.

Yes you read that right.  We hate to think what’s going through Sony’s mind at the moment.  They must have known about this for a while, but sadly they don’t like to buy exclusives.  Square Enix have already passed over their Tri-Ace developers to bring titles to the Xbox 360 first: including Star Ocean 4 and Infinite Undiscovery. 

Now with one final “special announcement” to close Microsoft’s conference a CG trailer began.  This is how the news went down via our very own live blogging:

Holy shit: Final Fantasy 13 will be on Xbox! This new trailer shows a good deal of CG.

This trailer is unspeakably awesome– tons of characters, action, and a bit of what appears to be battle gameplay. The character models are great. The music is impressive– I’m liking this part a lot. The crowd goes wild.

Square Enix’s Yoichi Wada had this to say:

At long last, the day we’ve all been waiting for has arrived. It gives me great pleasure to unveil this to you today. Doing an Xbox 360 version of FFXIII will allow us to provide the game to even more fans in the two regions of North America and Europe, and we’re currently working hard on its development.

With a serious gloating hat on, Don Mattik of Microsoft closed the conference with this comment ”Final Fantasy joins a long list of former PlayStation franchises finding a new home on Xbox 360. Thank you all for coming.”  No, thank you.

*Update* - Here’s live footage of the trailer shown at the petulmate stage of Microsoft’s Conference:

Tags: E3 08, Final-Fantasy-XIII, Xbox 360

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• Over Forty New Final Fantasy XIII Screens Just In Time For The Weekend
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• Square Enix President Downplays Final Fantasy XIII “Newness”, Still Predicts Record Sales
• Final Fantasy Versus XIII Still A Ways Off

1 Comment » John Kershaw on July 15, 2008 4:58 am ouch. What’s the PS3 got left? Reliability? RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.