NEWS - Thursday, March 10, 2005
Square Enix Talent And Xbox 2
Xbox 2 Gets More Square Enix Talent March 9, 2005 - Since the surprise announcement a couple of weeks back that Japanese development studio Mistwalker, a team headed up by Final Fantasy father Hironobu Sakaguchi, would be developing two Xbox 2 RPGs, things have seemingly gone quiet on the games... on our side of the Pacific, at least. In Japan, however, the island nation’s most popular game magazine, Famitsu, has featured weekly interviews concerning the new projects. This week’s interview, conducted with Sakaguchi himself, contains a big surprise: more Square Enix talent for Xbox 2. According to the magazine, Daisuke Fukugawa, who previously served as battle planner on Final Fantasy Tactics and as planner for Legend of Mana is now serving at Mistwalker as director on one of the team’s two projects. Hiroshi Arai, who supervised 3D graphic design for Final Fantasy 7 and served as modeling supervisor on Final Fantasy 9 is now at Mistwalker, doing modeling work on both projects. Sakaguchi suggests in the interview that work on the new projects is progressing smoothly. Over one hundred developers are working on the games, which are being co-developed by Microsoft and Mistwalker. As was originally revealed, Mistwalker is working on the music and scenario sides of the games with Microsoft Game Studio handling the technical aspects. If you want to play Sakaguchi games early in the next generation, you’re going to have to get an Xbox 2. According to Sakaguchi, the only next generation games currently in development at Mistwalker are these two Xbox 2 titles, which pushes aside the possibility that the company is also developing for PlayStation 3 and Revolution at this time.Source: http://www.ign.com
