Square-Enix published a very positive financial report for the final three quarters of 2009, largely buoyed by the release of Final Fantasy XIII, as well as the company’s purchase of European developer Eidos Interactive.
In 2008, Square-Enix was creating Final Fantasy games. In 2009, they released Final Fantasy games. In 2010, they’ll release more Final Fantasy games. Those three facts are the main reasons Square-Enix reported a 50-percent increase in revenue for the last nine months of 2009 over 2008, and why the company forecasts a successful first quarter for this year.
Due in large part to the release of Final Fantasy XIII in Japan, Square-Enix reported a 48% increase in income from March to December of 2009 when compared to the same period in 2008. Eidos published Batman: Arkham Asylum during that same timeframe, which probably helped things a bit, as did the worldwide release of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers. With Final Fantasy XIII and Just Cause II coming out in the US next month, the predictions for the final quarter of this fiscal year (which ends in March) are upbeat, predicting a 58% increase in revenue for the fiscal year overall over the previous one that ended last March.
A comment from the financial report pointed out Square-Enix’s methods of success. “We are pleased with the success of our Final Fantasy XIII launch in Japan” said Yoichi Wada, the President and Representative Director of Square Enix, who continued “Further, our integration activities since the acquisition of Eidos in April are progressing rapidly and allowing us to strengthen our global business framework.”
What should be interesting is seeing how the next fiscal year shapes up for Square-Enix, as the company has many relatively unestablished IPs like Nier and Supreme Commander in the works for major consoles, as well as iPhone versions of the first two Final Fantasy games.
No, that’s not a typo. Metal Gear Solid: Piece Walker is Kojima Productions’ promotional, web-based Flash game for the upcoming release of Peace Walker. It even has competitive multiplayer.
If you just can’t wait for the impending release of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, you can kill some time right now with Kojima Productions’ decidedly clever web-based, online Flash jigsaw game, cutely titled Piece Walker. The game has you matching tiles by placing them on top of the franchise’s iconic boxes, and then walking them to the appropriate place on a board to construct an image from the upcoming game. It’s a decidedly fun game, and you don’t even have to register in order to play. There’s even a competitive multiplayer mode to try.
Chaos Rising is the first expansion for real time strategy game Dawn of War II. We get a look at the new faction and a new multiplayer mode that redefines the meaning of “chaos.”
Fans of real time strategy (RTS) games like me are no strangers to expansions. The reason I never got into the first Dawn of War is because it had three heavy-hitter expansions that I needed to buy in order to keep up with my friends online — and this was even before developer Relic Entertainment announced a proper sequel. Now that DoW II’s been out for almost a year, though, I guess it’s high time for the sequels to start and Chaos Rising leads off.
I expected the usual laundry list of new maps, units, and campaign sections, but I was pleased to see that Chaos Rising adds a little pizzazz to DoW II in the form of the gruesome Chaos faction. These guys were Space Marines, but after a trip through something called the Warp, they’ve become something else – something corrupted and bloodthirsty (seriously, one of their faction heroes wears the skin of a Space Marine’s face as a banner — sick). The story behind the expansion campaign is that a planet lost in the Warp reappears a year after the events of the base game. As the Space Marine faction, you explore this icy, strange planet to find clues about where it’s been and what happened to the Space Marines who held it. The campaign introduces players to the Corruption System where certain events in the game corrupt units under your command depending on the player’s choices (which in turn changes their skill set and personal attacks). Presumably this is what happened to the Space Marines who held the missing planet after they went into the Warp, and this is where we get the flashy Chaos faction from.
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Much as we may have wanted it, we’ve never been able to play against PlayStation owners from our Xboxes when it comes to games with the same name. On mobile platforms, it’s quite different though.
We’re going to see this kind of thing a lot more in the coming months. With numerous mobile game studios working on both iPhone and Android applications, it makes perfect sense that the games would be able to talk to each other. One of the first to market is Com2Us Homerun Battle 3D (iTunes link), a new variation of a previous iPhone game called Baseball Slugger. Though a well-regarded baseball game in its own right, the fact that you can play multiplayer games between iDevices and Android devices through an online connection without any fuss is the kind of thing that we wish console manufactures would have allowed with their online services from the beginning. Check out the video below from Touch Arcade to see it in action.
Nintendo’s Eiji Aonuma told Japanese video game magazine Famitsu that he’d like to have something on the new Zelda game for Wii in playable form at E3 in June. This follows reports last month that the game will probably be released before the end of this year.
While it’s by no means a confirmation that the game will actually be shown, Nintendo’s Eiji Aonuma, the producer on the still unnamed Zelda sequel for Wii has said that he’d “like to show something playable” at E3 this year. He stated that “we’re doing everything we can to have people play the game as soon as possible.”
Nintendo remains cagey about release dates and any confirmed details on the game. In January, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime had said that, “right now it’s still in development, but the key message that Mr. Aonuma and Mr. Miyamoto are telling us is that it really has to be perfect when it launches. That is what fans are expecting.” Around the same time Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata confirmed to Japanese newspaper the Ashi Shimnun that the game will release “by the end of the year,” though gave no further details.
Update: According to Japanese gaming news site Andriasang, the game will be Wii MotionPlus exclusive. “After making it compatible,” the site notes Aonuma saying, “it just feels so natural. Link’s sword and the controller that you’re holding become one.”
The E3 expo runs from June 15-17 in Los Angeles this year.