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.
The United States Air Force Research Laboratory has ordered 2,000 PlayStation 3s, with the intention of creating a supercomputer by harnessing the processing power of the collective group.
1UP has come across a report from the US Department of Defense-owned news source Stars and Stripes stating that the US Air Force has commissioned a supercomputer comprised of 2,000 PlayStation 3s. The $2 million project will also utilize an “off-the-shelf” graphics processor to create a supercomputer “nearly 100,000 times faster than high-end computer processors sold today,” according to Stars and Stripes.
This isn’t the first time that a Sony video game console has been linked to a military power. About ten years ago, Sony’s PlayStation 2 was rumored to have been purchased en masse by the Iraq in order to build a supercomputer for military purposes. And you wonder why we couldn’t find “weapons of mass destruction” over there…
PlayStation 3-owning fans of the Tales series will be sad to hear that currently Namco Bandai has no plans to release the PS3 port of the 2008 Japanese role-playing game in the US. The port hit shelves in Japan last September and is about to get a combination anime/downloadable content Blu-Ray this May.
Siliconera reports today that a Tales of Vesperia anime movie called The First Strike is being bundled with downloadable content in Blu-Ray, DVD, and UMD form for a May 28 release. We asked Namco Bandai about a possible US release and were told that currently the company has no plans to bring the PlayStation 3 port stateside.
“As for First Strike, it is possible that an anime publisher in the US may pick up the license as there have been Tales anime releases in the US,” a Namco Bandai America publicist told GamePro, “but NBGA have no details regarding this issue at the moment.”
Namco Bandai previously released a PS3 port of the 2007 JRPG Eternal Sonata in the US which included new story content and playable characters. Similarly, the PS3 Tales of Vesperia features new content and a new character named Patty Fleur.
The First Strike anime serves as a prequel of the game’s story, covering the years main character Yuri Lowell spent as a knight. Siliconera warns hardcore fans who want to import the anime that “PSP/PS3 games are region free, but not Blu-ray discs or UMD movies. You’ll need a Japanese PS3 or PSP to play these.”
Lost in Nightmares, Capcom’s first of two new episodes for Resident Evil 5 takes the series back to its survival-horror roots. Along with a crazed, anchor-wielding enemy, the game takes on the look and feel of past titles of the series.
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that it felt like Resident Evil’s “pure horror” roots were ripped out of Resident Evil 5. To be fair, the game was a lot of fun and the series’ dramatic transformation into a more Gears of War-style cooperative action shooter worked for the most part. But as a fan of horror movies and Resident Evil’s survival-horror origins, I felt oddly betrayed by the game’s emphasis on explosions over suspense. When I sat down to play the first of the two new episodes coming soon for Resident Evil 5, titled Lost in Nightmares, Capcom explained that the return to horror in the episode is a direct response to fans’ reactions to RE5′s departure from the genre.
“A lot of fans thought Resident Evil 5 was too much action and not enough survival horror,” admits Capcom’s product marketing manager Matt Dahlgren. “And Lost in Nightmares (the first new episode available) is our response to that. After the original game shipped, we took a lot of fan feedback into account before creating the new episodes. There are two main ways people play Resident Evil: there’s the slow and suspenseful way, which is the more traditional Resident Evil experience, and there’s the more action-packed experience, which was featured in Resident Evil 5.”
George Hotz — or GeoHot, if you prefer — was known as “the kid who cracked the iPhone” back when he was 17-years-old. Now, roughly three years later, he claims he’s hacked the PlayStation 3 and is linking to the exploit today.
Last week, hacker George Hotz blogged that he had hacked the PlayStation 3. He spoke with the BBC on Monday announcing his exploits — and today, he’s releasing the exploit to the public.
“In the interest of openness, I’ve decided to release the exploit,” Hotz wrote on his blog. “Hopefully, this will ignite the PS3 scene, and you will organize and figure out how to use this to do practical things, like the iPhone when jailbreaks were first released. I have a life to get back to and can’t keep working on this all day and night.”
Hotz rose to prominence in 2007 when he released a hack for the iPhone. In an interview with the BBC, he said his exploits are motivated purely by curiosity. He also told the news outlet that though hacking the PS3 means users can run pirated games, he’ll have nothing to do with that aspect of hacking the PS3.
The hack gives users full access to the PS3′s memory and “therefore ring 0 access from OtherOS.”
