Square-Enix Press Conference at E3

Square-Enix broke out in the pre-E3 conferences with some colossal announcements about their plans for both current-gen and next-gen games. They started off by showing off some of their already-confirmed upcoming games like Dawn of Mana (PS2), Final Fantasy V and FFVI Advance (both for the GBA), as well as some mobile games, the biggest being Final Fantasy: Before Crisis coming out stateside, finally, and followed by announcing that, at long last, Final Fantasy XII would be coming to America in October later this year. After, they began showing off trailers for some of their bigger upcoming games, like Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth and the already-released Final Fantasy XI: Treasures of Aht Urhgan, as well as some stuff for Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core for the PSP. One of the bigger announcements for fans of the Enix half of the company will be pleased to know that Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime will be coming out in America for the Nintendo DS. Nintendo fans have even more to look forward to, with two Final Fantasies announced for the DS and Wii, both based upon Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles subtitled Rings of Fate and The Crystal Bearers respectively.

Quite possibly the biggest announcement is that Final Fantasy XIII will be having three different installments coming out. With the incredible success of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, they plan to do something similar with Final Fantasy XII. Final Fantasy XIII (headed by Motomu Toriyama) for the PS3, and Final Fantasy Versus XIII (headed by Tetsuya Nomura), also for the PS3 as well as a mobile Final Fantasy XIII will all be based in the same world, and all guaranteed successes. No gameplay details were given, except that FFVXIII will be an action game, but the story will end up taking place in the most futuristic, technologically advanced Final Fantasy yet (though, none of the Final Fantasies except VII and VIII really take place in anywhere all THAT futuristic).

So, the total game list coming to consoles and handhelds goes:

Final Fantasy XII (PS2)

Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus (PS2)

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (PSP)

Final Fantasy V Advance (GBA)

Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA)

Final Fantasy III (DS)

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Rings of Fate (DS)

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (Wii)

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)

Final Fantasy Versus XIII (PS3)

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (PSP)

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (PS2)

Dawn of Mana (PS2)

Children of Mana (DS)