This might, perhaps, be a little disjointed...
Eh, I'm not too bothered either way, to be honest. MS just pulled off some awesome news - FFXIII 360, HDD game installs and 16:10 support, which are great, but aren't going to convince me to buy a 360 as a lot of the other stuff they're pushing (achievements, social networking, yadda yadda...) I'm just not interested in. So far the only game that really draws me toward the 360 is Mass Effect - and that, purely, because I don't want the PC DRM nonsense.
So far the series that were on the PS2 that I absolutely adored - DMC, FF... their next-gen versions I've utterly detested. I'll still probably buy FFXIII, but I'm not expecting greatness out of it. I've been spoilt by how incredibly good (and replayable) the earlier FF games are; it's also proof that good graphics do not make a good game.
I'm honestly surprised that Square-Enix haven't gone multiplatform in the past... and suspect that is due to agreements with Sony (much like their agreements with Nintendo years past), so I'm not unhappy to see that it's now multiplatform - so long as they don't let one platform suffer for the benefit of the other.
I've seen 360 fanboys on the net screaming about how "OMG PS3 iz teh failz!" for losing FFXIII as an exclusive, and PS3 fanboys moaning about Square selling them out. Hah. Yeah, right. DMC4 seemed to do fairly well multiplatform, playing to the strengths of each console, so I can only say that, right now, FFXIII going multiplatform means that more people can potentially play it. And this is a good thing.
I have to admit, I'm not sure which version will be 'better' if you want to look at it in those terms - Square are going to be well aware that Japan is their home territory and FFXIII is going to sell massively there - but I doubt that it'll sell 360s, given the relatively low penetration of the 360 as a device in Japan. It'll sell massively on the PS3 there, so Square aren't going to want to screw up the PS3 version. In the US and Europe, it will probably sell slightly better on the 360, just through sheer number of installed units.
I'm looking forward to FFXIII. I'll be buying it on the PS3. But honestly, I'm not holding my breath for it to be an awesome game, as FFXII was rather... underwhelming... for me. I had more fun going back and playing FFVI than I did playing FFXII.
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As for continuity in the FF games... there is little. Not none as Square seem to have decided to milk a cash-cow for all it's worth, rather than stick to their guns on the matter of sequels etc. Examples? Certainly:
FFX -> FFX-2
FFXII -> FFXII Revenant Wings
FFVII -> FFVII Advent Children -> FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus -> Crisis Core (CC is a prequel, but is the latest of the FFVII 'world')
I'd love a sequel or prequel or... well, anything really, to FFVIII and FF Tactics, but I know it's not going to happen. ;)
There are a few other elements that link the games together - Biggs and Wedge (Biggs was named Vicks in FF6), Chocobos, characters called Cid, spell names, items, summons/espers/GFs/whatever-you-want-to-call-thems, and in most of the games, the Active Time Battle system (yes, they got creative a few of the games, like FFX and FFXII, and moved away from that, and while the FFX battle system wasn't too bad (basically ATB tweaked) I really hated whatever the FFXII one was called... CTB was it?
In fact, recently, as Square have got more and more adventurous with the changes they make to each game... I've grown less and less keen on them.
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I can understand why some people don't like the FF games... in the most rigid sense they're quite limiting for a significant portion of the game over what you can do, but hey, I personally can't stand most MMOs or Counterstrike-esque games... so everyone has something they don't like. If everyone liked everything, it'd be a very boring world. :lol:
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