The newest chapter of the Final Fantasy saga secures another first place in overall sales in Japan in traditional low-sales period.

Square Enix can boast about possibly the largest fanbase in the world, based mostly around the highly successfull (and addictive) Final Fantasy series, and to a lesser extent around the Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts series. And surely such a large crowd will buy your game if there is any “Final Fantasy” snippet in the title.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on the DS follows the successes of Final Fantasy Tactics PSP and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy PSP in May, and September respectively, debuting on the first place in the japanese sales charts at 142,000 units units. This is a commercial success, if you take into consideration the following games in the charts: #2 Ar Tonelico 2 for the PS2 and World Soccer Winning Eleven DS.

To quote a famous future game hero, “It’s about time!”

After 4 years, Electronic Arts finally released Flagship’s signature piece. Bill Roper, ex Blizzard North and currently CEO of Flagship Studios (with several ex-Blizzard members whom worked on Diablo) is convinced that the game will bring a lot of enjoyment to all rabid fans out there, waiting for another quality hack-n-slash-action RPG.

I have played the demo, things are looking up, and this will probably a GREAT game. You just need to go to the local game shop and get convinced yourself. I just wouldn’t want to be paying to play multiplayer (still not very sure what the plans are about this).

Kojima states that, for the good of the game, MGS 4 will be delayed

In a brief announcement, Konami has confirmed that the release of key PlayStation 3 exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has been delayed until early 2008. It appears that concerns about the quality of the game were raised, so the 200 developers working on Metal Gear Solid 4 will spend this additional time polishing the game to a neat finish, as all Kojima games are.

Touching another subject here, MGS 4 and Final Fantasy XIII are PS3 exclusives that Sony puts a lot of faith in showing to the world the real capabilities of the Play Station 3, and a little delay is surely going to hurt Sony too. The good news (if any) is that Kojima wants to try a worldwide release for this title, which means everybody will get it at the same time: Japan, Europe and America.

The latest iteration of most famous Italian except maybe The Godfather is finally here!

And it was about time, following Shigeru Miyamoto’s promise at Game Developers Conference 2007 that we would be able to play it this year. This is a game we all have been expecting, drooling over trailers and demo gameplay videos over the web; it’s reception was so successfull that one editor from 1Up.com said “this is the best example of how to use a Wii”, while another editor, this time from IGN stated that “the game was perfect”. But that remains to be seen.

By the end of the week, Super Mario Galaxy should be available in Japan, with rest-of-the-world releases scheduled for 12 November and 16 November, in America and Europe respectively.

On a personal note, coming from Miyamoto, this should prove a good game design leson, if not a great game.

If you ever wanted to be a Rock Star and play the drums or guitar (bass included!), look no further.

On 20 November “Rock Band” will be released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 (later in the year there will also be a PS2 version), and we finally have an official playlist for the game. Continue reading →