Final Fantasy going to X360

Well there goes another Sony exclusive and one of the biggest ones at that, Final Fantasy XIII. I was pretty disappointed when I read the news this morning, the FF series and the PlayStation share a legacy together, giving birth to some of the finest RPG games ever made, FF VII, FF VIII and in my opinion the finest RPG ever made, FF X. Square-Enix states the reason for doing so is to broaden the fan base of FF over America and Europe, but everyone knows MS paid a lot for this, like they paid for Mass Effect, Gears of War 1 & 2 and the GTA IV downloadable content.

Now, of course Square are going to gain more sales from this but I guarantee that figure will be severely small. Here's why;

1. FFXIII is a essentially a timed exclusive for Sony - FFXIII is not being released for Japanese X360s, the reason behind this is the poor install base of X360s in Japan. FFXIII for the X360 is only being released to English speaking places such as America and Europe but the Japanese version is being released before this so Sony will dominate here as 100% of Japanese PS3 owners will be getting this game.

2. When people think FF they think Sony or Nintendo - In Europe the install base for the PS3 and X360 are pretty much the same. Which is good on Sony's behalf considering they entered this console war a year later than MS. Anyway, this means that FFXIII sales in Europe could go either way, but they wont, because people will still think of FF and Sony together. If a Halo 4 came to Playstation as well as the X360 and you asked owners of both consoles which version they would get, vast majority would answer X360 purely because of the history between the console and game. Same situation with FF.

3. Americans don't care for RPGs as much as the rest of the world does - That's why they all own X360s, the console is smothered with games like Halo, Gears of War and Project Gotham Racing and that's all they want. Not time consuming RPGs that span across 100+ hours with epic battles that can take half an hour. I'm not saying FF will not sell anything in America, all I'm saying is it will sell a pathetic amount when compared to sales across Europe, Japan and Australia. Most of which will be on the PS3. The console FF should remain on.

FFXIII is being released at the same time for both consoles around the rest of the world which is stupid and a huge annoyance for PS3 owners as development for the X360 version is not starting till the PS3 development has finished. MS must have really forked out some cash for this.