Enhanced performance, 9x resolution boost - and vastly improved video cutscenes.
The recent arrival of Final Fantasy 13 on Xbox One is a simply brilliant addition to the backwards compatible library. And for X owners at least, the transformation is astonishing: what was originally the least preferable version of the game is now by far and away the best way to play it. Better still, it also sees Microsoft going the extra mile to bring an enhanced experience to users, to the point where the line blurs significantly between backwards compatibility and a bespoke remastering effort.
Some tremendous steps toward LGBTI equality have been taken of late - the gay marriage referendum in Ireland being one particularly inspiring example. There's still a ways to go, of course, but overall it's encouraging to see acceptance growing in the public consciousness.
Final Fantasy 13's PC release in October was met with a worrisome amount of disappointment and anger as its resolution was locked to 1280x720. Thankfully, modding extraordinaire Durante came to the rescue and released a mod that alleviated this problem, but not without a few flies in the ointment.
Yesterday Final Fantasy 13 launched on Steam, but there was one problem: its resolution was locked to 1280x720. Thankfully, modder Durante - the hacker who saved the day when Dark Souls and Deadly Premonition suffered similar resolution woes on PC - has released a mod to fix this nonsense.
From the archive: the inside story on Microsoft's greatest ever challenge.
Every Sunday we haul an exciting article out of the Eurogamer archive so you can read it again or enjoy it for the first time if you missed it. Wesley's piece on Xbox's trials and tribulations in Japan was originally published on 14th December 2012.
While recent Final Fantasy games haven't been greeted with too much enthusiasm by fans, franchise creator Hironobu Sakaguchi says he still has plenty of faith in the series' current custodian Yoshinori Kitase.
Hate is a powerful word. How often does it really apply? I'm not a fan of novelty crisp flavours or the Black-Eyed Peas, but do I truly hate them? Probably not.
I doubt Japan ever expected to play Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox 360, but last week a cut-price, content-boosted version of the game on Microsoft's machine was released.
Final Fantasy's arrival on current gen hardware was good, but not brilliant - and game creators Motomu Toriyama (director) and Akihiko Maeda have now explained why.
Square Enix has denied reports that the Ultimate Hits International edition of Final Fantasy XIII, which will bring the game to Japanese 360s for the first time, features new content.
Square Enix has confirmed that Japanese Xbox 360 owners will get to play Final Fantasy XIII after all, with the release of a special edition at the end of this year.
Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada has admitted that Final Fantasy XIII met with a mixed reaction from gamers, and that he's not sure if the long-running RPG series should look to change in the future.
Final Fantasy XIII and Dragon Quest IX have driven Square Enix sales through the roof.
The Japanese company today revealed a 42 per cent rise in revenue and a 50 per cent rise net income for the financial year ended 31st March 2010. Accountants were so pleased they used colour in the annual report.
Final Fantasy XIII - released early March 2010 - was the company's best performer. The role-playing game sold 5.55m units worldwide.
Final Fantasy XIII on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 was one of the biggest Face-Offs we've produced, but more than that it was an analysis of one of the biggest games - in terms of actual scope - that we've ever had to cover. In putting together the original piece, we were about a week ahead of the release: enough to do the game justice in terms of the comparison coverage, but not enough to see the whole game through to its conclusion, let alone on both platforms.
There's a Final Fantasy XIV closed beta invite inside the PS3 Final Fantasy XIII box.
Rummage around near the manual and you'll find a code for the Square Enix Members website. Redeem and you'll be on a VIP list for the FFXIV closed beta. You'll also receive a special in-game item to use in the 14th Final Fantasy game.
Earlier this month, Square Enix told us that loyal FFXI players would be invited to a FFXIV closed alpha test on 11th March.
It's tempting to portray Final Fantasy at a crossroads: stumbling, after three unusually long years, into an unfamiliar landscape of multi-platform releases and a weak Japanese gaming industry, and onto a generation of console hardware that was already middle-aged by the time the great series showed up. Role-playing games have been scattered to the four winds of American sci-fi, pocket monster hunting, genre crossover and MMOs, and you might assume that Final Fantasy needed to do something to redefine itself.
But the truth is, it was ever thus. The first Final Fantasy, made as the young Square faced bankruptcy, was born and named in a desperation that was only ironic after the fact. Since then, despite its gargantuan success, the series has treated every moment like it was its last. Every Final Fantasy - especially since its arrival on disc and in 3D with the seventh game in 1997 - has been a reinvention, telling the same old story with new characters, new worlds, new tools, new systems, and ever-greater helpings of spectacle and sentimentality. They've always been a contradiction.
In that sense, Final Fantasy XIII is no different. On one hand, it sticks closer to the strict formal rhythms and linear underpinnings of the Japanese RPG than not just the divisive Final Fantasy XII, but even many of its predecessors. But the thirteenth game is also far more innovative and forward-thinking than it's been given credit for. It's as bold and intractable, as rebellious and respectful as one of the series' angsty teen heroes.
The rumours are true. Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox 360 isn't anywhere near as impressive as it is on PlayStation 3. The real kicker is that it's a lot worse than it should have been.
Square Enix's latest epic - 4.5 years in the making - follows on the basic principles established by all of its PlayStation predecessors in combining an excellent 3D engine along with vast amounts of pre-rendered CG. This presented two very difficult issues for the developers tasked with porting an already mature PS3 work-in-progress over to the Xbox 360.
Firstly, the Crystal Tools engine needed to be translated across to the Microsoft platform. Secondly, the team had to find a way to compress over 32GB of CG to fit within the confines of three Xbox 360 DVDs - squeezed already by a copy protection mechanism that limits available space to a meagre 6.8GB, less than the storage potential of both PlayStation 2 and Wii.
Website Ve3tro.com has reported the NXE hard disk install sizes for each of the three game discs that make up the Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII.
Yoshinori Kitase has built us up and now he is letting us down, explaining that remaking Final Fantasy VII to today's standards would simply take too long.
Make your mind up. Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase has denied that there are plans to release any downloadable content for the RPG epic, just weeks after saying there would be.
Asked yet again what he'd think about remaking PSone classic Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix's Yoshinori Kitase - producer of FFXIII and director of FFVII back in the day - has said he'd be "really interested" in such a project.
Square Enix has admitted that some Final Fantasy XIII screenshots it released last week, which purported to show the PS3 and 360 versions of the game but were virtually identical, were "altered".
Final Fantasy XIII is coming to Europe on Xbox 360 as well, and to make sure you remember, Square Enix and Microsoft have teamed up to do two special console bundles.
Kitase and Toriyama on the Western reaction and going multiformat.
There's no launch quite like a Final Fantasy launch, and there's been no Final Fantasy launch quite like this one. The first ever multi-platform entry in the main series, the thirteenth game is also the first in this generation of hardware, arriving rather late after an epic development that, at its peak, involved a staff of 300 people.
Square Enix is "interested" in the possibility of a 3D version of Final Fantasy XIII, and has even produced a trailer for the game using the new technology.
Motomu Toriyama and Yoshinori Kitase have admitted they aren't sure what Square Enix president Yoichi Wada meant when he said Final Fantasy XIII might be the last game of its kind from the veteran RPG publisher.
Square Enix's Motomu Toriyama has said that work on the "overseas version" of Final Fantasy XIII is "finally completed" and apologised for "the long wait".
The joke, so it goes among Final Fantasy's legions of hecklers, is that aside from some new belts, buckles and hairspray nothing ever really changes in Japan's most misleadingly-titled RPG franchise. Rather, each subsequent release echoes the preceding one in both form and function, the aged, crumbly mechanics that drive each game merely obfuscated by ever more dazzling CGI.
Square Enix has dug deep and found another few hundred thousand copies of Final Fantasy XIII for the game's launch in Japan earlier today.
A healthy 1.8 million copies of the PS3 game have been trucked off to shops around the region - a figure that includes console bundled copies.
Prior to this revision, Square Enix had said that 1.3 million copies of the highly anticipated PS3 RPG would be available during the game's first seven days on sale.
Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada reckons the company can sell more than six million copies of Final Fantasy XIII worldwide.
Speaking to Reuters Japan in comments picked up by Kotaku, Wada also said he wants Dragon Quest IX to break the five-million barrier in Japan, which he thinks it will do this year.
Final Fantasy XIII is due out for PS3 in Japan on 17th December, and will be released for PS3 and Xbox 360 simultaneously in the West in spring 2010.
Sony and Square Enix have unveiled the Final Fantasy XIII PS3 Slim bundle at the Tokyo Game Show, and offered audiences their first look at the pretty console paintjob.
Update: The date has been confirmed. The price, with tax, is ¥9240 (£60.54).
Square Enix is expected to confirm a 17th December Japanese release for Final Fantasy XIII today at a special Tokyo Premiere Party that starts at 7pm JST (11am UK).
The announcement was pre-emptively spoiled by an online advertising campaign on YouTube Japan which, when its URL was changed to contain "After", displayed the December date. Oops. Fansite FinalFantasy-XIII.net had the scoop.
Summoning and soundbites from director Motomu Toriyama.
Our last meeting with Final Fantasy XIII - playing the half-hour demo on the bonus disc nestled in the Advent Children special-edition Blu-ray in a tiny Japanese living room, back in April - was rather more intimate than this month's gamescom demonstration. It was possible to gain a real feel for the colourful, sleek science-fiction setting and revamped Active Time battle system, and both impressed us with their innovative spark as much as their predictably professional implementation. FFXIII is, in keeping with series tradition, a bright departure into a brave new universe rather than an incremental update.
Square Enix hasn't decided whether the West will be given a Final Fantasy XIII demo, but if is then the content will be very different to the Japanese sampler.
It's late on the second day of E3 2009. A hot and bothered collection of half a dozen game journalists from the US and Europe is crammed awkwardly around one side of a table in an interview room at the back of the Square Enix booth, straining to hear against the muffled boom of the show floor. They're bristling with cameras, microphones and grumpy, it's-been-a-long-day attitude. It has. It's been a long week.
Welcome to the Digital Foundry channel at Eurogamer. Check out the Editor's blog to find out what it's all about, and make sure to explore for loads more technical breakdown and analysis.
Final Fantasy XIII Producer Yoshinori Kitase has said the Xbox 360 version of the game may not have enough disc-space for the original Japanese voiceover.
Playing the Japanese demo of Final Fantasy XIII - released in Japan today as part of Advent Children Complete - you're struck by something: this is the first Final Fantasy universe to be created with years' worth of titles in mind rather than just one or two. It shows in the scope and detail of the world. It's a gorgeous, colourful and imaginative science-fiction fantasy; what Star Wars might have looked like if it had been designed by the Japanese, seeping polish and style from every pore. The character design might be vaguely familiar from previous entries in the series, but the world, with its enormous, shining biomechs and fighter spacecraft, emphatically is not.
Hands-on previews of Final Fantasy XIII in Edge and the UK Official PlayStation Magazine have torn the wraps off the game's battle system for the first time.
Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada has said the Dragon Quest IX delay may cause problems for the release of Final Fantasy XIII.
"The next term's schedule hasn't been fixed yet. Presently, I cannot say what kind of effect we will experience from moving the Dragon Quest IX launch from March to July," Wada told IT Media (spotted by Kotaku) when asked if there will be repercussions. "I cannot say there won't be an effect.
"There is a possibility that [the] Dragon Quest IX delay could affect Final Fantasy XIII," he added
This week we've already guided you through the coming year's hot picks for Indie and Esoterica and Sports and Music games. Still to come are Fighting, Strategy, Action, Adventure, Shooters and Racing. But today we're looking at two sectors with the same dice-rolling roots that are heading in more than two different directions in 2009 - role-playing games (RPGs), and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs).
Microsoft marketeer Albert Pennello has claimed Xbox 360 sales were the pivotal factor in bringing Final Fantasy XIII to the console - not any funny goings-on behind the scenes.
Square Enix president Yoichi Wada has told GamesIndustry.biz that the RPG specialist is neutral when it comes to dealing with publishing and platform partners.
Questions and answers from the Square Enix press conference. Mostly the former.
There were plenty of things about the Xbox 360 E3 press conference that were surprising - not least, what wasn't in it - but none more so than the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would be coming to Microsoft's console, at launch, in the US and Europe.
Square Enix's John Yamamoto, president and CEO for North America and Europe, has said that the publisher is busily trying to work out if it can release Last Remnant and Final Fantasy XIII simultaneously worldwide, calling it "a goal".
Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima and Square-Enix's Tetsuya Nomura both believe PlayStation 3 will be the best outlet for their games in two or three years' time.
Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama says he wants the fight scenes in Square-Enix's PlayStation 3 RPG to look like the ones in computer-generated film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children.
With E3 just weeks away now, everyone and his blog's got a theory about what's going to be shown - and two of the most interesting rumours are about a pair of rather inevitable sequels.
Respondents to a survey on emotion in videogames have voted Square-Enix's Final Fantasy titles as the most emotionally rich games ever made, citing the death of Aeries in Final Fantasy VII as the series' most tearjerking moment.
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