FF Versus XIII reports "are false"

By Tom Bramwell Published 19 June, 2008

Square Enix denies it's on hold.

Square Enix has rubbished suggestions that Final Fantasy Versus XIII is on hold.

"Reports that development for Final Fantasy Versus XIII is on hold are false," the publisher said in a statement passed on to Eurogamer.

"The truth of the situation is that when free, some staff from the Versus team have been helping with the XIII team on development of Final Fantasy XIII. Development for both titles is continuing as originally scheduled."

That rather significantly contradicts translations of game director Tetsuya Nomura's comments in a Famitsu article, where he reportedly used the words "on hold" and said "the entire Versus team is helping to finish Final Fantasy XIII".

Along with Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, Versus makes up a three-game "compilation" of titles marking the next, and next-generation, step forward in the famous Square RPG series.

Not much is really known about it other than what's been seen in trailers, but Nomura has previously evoked Kingdom Hearts when searching for comparisons. Speaking to Eurogamer last May, Nomura said it would "examine the humanity of the characters in this game" and distinguish itself from the FF games' traditional fantasy worlds.

"In Versus I'm trying to propose new vision of how a Final Fantasy game can be. The game's going to be more human than the science-fiction caricature we so often see. It will focus around current world events - in that sense it's darker," he explained at the time.

It's also still happily in development, or so Square Enix says, despite the inevitable bias towards getting FF XIII - a banner game for both its publisher and platform holder Sony - out of the door as quickly as possible. Hopefully we'll hear more about its progress at E3.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Widge #1 4 years ago

    I DON'T CARE! GET THE MAIN ONE OUT FIRST!

  • DFawkes #2 4 years ago

    Widge +1

    The other news made me considerably happier, knowing 2 dev teams were working on 1 game to make it a ULTRA SUPER MEGA GAME!!! Kind of.

  • CosmicFuzz #3 4 years ago

    disc, was Nomura in charge of Kingdom Hearts?

  • penhalion #4 4 years ago

    Why would the staff from versus be helping out in their spare time? I've worked long enough in this industry to know things simply don't happen like that. Team member shave their own work schedules and it's impossible to start work on something on a different project unless you've been freed for however long it's going to take to do the job i.e. You can't simply say I'll spend 2 days doing this routine when any number of things can extend that time to weeks or even months.

  • ParanoidZombie #5 4 years ago

    1 rumour + 1 denial = 2 news.

  • bitesize #6 4 years ago


    @ penhalion: probably not programmers (i presume you're talking about programmers since you talk about routines), but artists/animators/qa/audio would be able to help out on a title as it comes to an end. happens where i work a fair bit - if a project is struggling a bit and up against a looming deadline, ppl from a less stressed project will get assigned over to it. just to help out with fixing bugs + stuff til it's finished.

  • Johnson #7 4 years ago

    "When free"? What a load of bollocks.

  • Sevens #8 4 years ago

    There is no "FF7" Dissidia.

    I also prefer Versus. XIII isn't the 'main one' either. The only thing it has over Versus is that it is released prior to it.

  • coojam #9 4 years ago

    Oh just hurry up and remake 7 for goodness sake. Or rather, take your time doing it, but at least announce it.

    Am I the only one who things that Final Fantasy Versus XIII sounds like the next SNK VS Capcom? Final Fantasy characters duking it out in a cartoon FPS?

  • CosmicFuzz #10 4 years ago

    Oh no I loved it, am currently at the final bunch of bosses (some serious grinding is in order before I go any further however!) so any Kingdom Heart-related involvement is good news :)

  • Scimarad #11 4 years ago

    Yay! Go Versus!

  • Galvanizer #12 4 years ago

    Still I got my money down on an early 2010 release for FFXIII.

    Versus XIII? Not till 2011 I'm afraid!

  • Skywise #13 4 years ago

    And best add a year of localisation to that :-)

  • timberwolf #14 4 years ago

    hurry up!