Microsoft announces ‘Final Fantasy XIII’ is coming to Xbox 360

The “E3″ video games summit at the Los Angeles Convention Center was bound to give some sensational news. At the Microsoft keynote speech at E3, MS dropped in an announcement “Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the Xbox 360.”

As Desert News mentions – The “Final Fantasy” announcement is big for the 360 because the PlayStation series of gaming consoles have thrived by nurturing exclusive games and franchises that help brand the systems in users minds. Sony maintains its stranglehold in Japan, in part because of the popularity of the epic role playing game.

Final Fantasy XIII is the flagship title of the Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy XIII collection. The game takes place in the same universe as Final Fantasy Agito XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, although they are not directly related to each other.[5] Motomu Toriyama, who was Director of Final Fantasy X-2 and Director and Scenario Writer of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, will direct the game. This game will be his first main installment Final Fantasy game as Director

The game runs on the Crystal Tools engine, an all-new seventh generation multiplatform game engine built by Square Enix for their future games. Both the engine and the game were originally slated to be used with the PlayStation 2 but were later moved to the PlayStation 3.

The engine handles advanced audio processing, cinematic cut-scene transition, physics effects calculations and special effects rendering. The Crystal Tools reportedly uses four of the six developer-available synergistic processing elements (SPEs) of the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture microprocessor to achieve near-pre-rendered CGI quality in realtime. Square Enix has licensed Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 to use on a number of other upcoming current generation titles, but will still use Crystal Tools for Final Fantasy XIII.

The E3 convention, open only to members of the media and gaming industry, has been used as a platform for breaking big video game news for over a decade. Sony and Nintendo will have separate press conferences later in the week and are also expected to make big announcements.

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