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Square Enix's Final Fantasy VII Hits Japanese PSN
by Leigh Alexander [PC, Console/PC]
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April 10, 2009
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Square Enix's watershed PlayStation title Final Fantasy VII is now available for PS3 and PSP via the PlayStation Network in Japan -- with no news yet on a U.S. debut.
The version made available is the Japanese-language international edition, which features several tweaks made to the original game when it was released in the West -- mostly usability streamlining of the menu display and materia system, plus an additional cutscene clarifying Cloud's opaque past.
According to consumer weblog Kotaku, the International Version of FFVII is priced at ¥1,500 ($14.93) on the Japanese PlayStation Network. The game is currently not available on other PlayStation stores, and plans to release it elsewhere have not been announced.
Final Fantasy VII came out on PlayStation in 1997, and a PC version launched a year later. It follows an amnesiac mercenary and a team of resistance fighters in their quest to save their dystopian world from a power-hungry energy company, and stop the personal revenge mission of a rogue super-soldier.
It's arguably the entry in Square Enix's long-running series with the largest and most loyal fanbase, and has spawned a PSP game prequel, Crisis Core.
FFVII has also seen an animated prequel, a mobile title and a CGI film, Advent Children, which is just about to receive a director's cut re-release on Blu-ray in Japan and the U.S., among legions of other merchandise and spinoffs.
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This seems like a missed opportunity on Sony's part by not making the true PS1 classics availible here, not to mention a chance to give us ports of Japanese PS1 games that were never released here. With the latter, localization may be an issue, but there were a slew of Japanese 2D shooters and other niche games that have very little text anyway.
Why Square has chose not to pursue this (they couldn't possibly have not picked up on it by now) really boggles my mind.
I own a lot of Square games in physical form, practically every Final Fantasy, Einhander, etc, and would buy it all again if it was like $10 on the PS3 for the convenience of never having to disc swap.
I doubt whether SE can pick up their glory in the past----like FF7 that once shocked classical FF fans and created a new wonder just like what FF1 did, and saved PS1, as well as Castle Vania.
It is a fact that the totally global market share of Nintendo is far more dominant than Sony(I mean portable game device), and such plan to capture those core fans is somewhat less significant than exploring a new group of gamers. Obviously Nintendo does much preeminent than Sony.