Well, alright! Thank you, cell phone camera person, for sneaking out the videos for Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII. Now I won’t have to wait till this January to see them.

I know I shouldn’t complain, but why couldn’t you sneak one of the FF13A/V vids out instead, GameSpot? Ah, well. The 3rd Birthday is coming out very soon in Japan and is the third game in the Parasite Eve franchise. It’s not called Parasite Eve 3 is because Square lost the rights to that name; the first game was actually an adaptation of a Japanese horror novel. Still, any new cult mitochondrial horror is reason to celebrate.

Siliconera has confirmed that a sequel to Dissidia: Final Fantasy will be coming to the PSP. The new is titled Dissidia Duodecim: Final Fantasy and is scheduled for a 2011 release in Japan. Joining the ranks of playable characters will be Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII and Kain from Final Fantasy IV. Kain is the more interesting addition to the crew, as it indicates the the sequel will be branching out and adding characters other than the main characters. More details are expected at Tokyo Game Show. I sincerely hope this means Zack is in the game. Who do you want in the sequel?

I can understand a love for most older games, but MMOs? Once the newest version or expansion pack of an MMO comes out, is there any reason to stay in the old version’s world? MMORPGs are fundamentally a massive time sink and if you can show me someone who can balance two at the same time, I’ll show you someone with two computers, two brains, and four arms.

Still, Square-Enix is trying to entice Final Fantasy fans to embrace Final Fantasy 11 and Final Fantasy 14 simultaneously with a set of bonuses to players who subscribe to both games at the same time. To start, if you get Final Fantasy 14, you’ll get $5 off your subscription to Final Fantasy 11, cutting your rates down to $7 per month. The discount only works for the base subscription of FF11, and you can only get one discount per FF14 service account. According to Square-Enix, if you have two FF14 accounts and three FF11 accounts, you’ll only get $5 off on two of the FF11 accounts. According to me, if you have two FF14 accounts and three FF11 accounts, you are completely insane.

Siliconera reports that The Last Story director Hironobu Sakaguchi said the game’s system took precedence over the story in an Iwata Asks interview. “During 23 years there are 3 times when I considered the [gameplay] system first” said Sakaguchi. The first was the original Final Fantasy and the second was Final Fantasy VII. “There was a considerable amount of trial and error.” Final Fantasy was when they first set up the systems that the RPG would use for decades, while Final Fantasy VII was the first shift to three dimensions.

Hironobu Sakaguchi created the Final Fantasy series in 1987 with the last of then Squaresoft’s money; the game was named ironically as Sakaguchi expected it to be his last game. He went on to be the head of Squaresoft all the way through Final Fantasy X-2, soon after which he left the company to form Mistwalker with funds from Microsoft. Mistwalker’s games have been critically successful, but haven’t been the financial hits they were expected to be. There is some speculation that The Last Story may also be ironically named, fueled by a mistranslation that Sakaguichi was quitting the industry after this title.

As many of you know, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series, is currently working on an project named The Last Story, being developed for the Nintendo Wii. It is tentatively to be released in Japan, at the end of 2010. In a interview he did about a week ago, Sakaguchi explained about his motivations and the restless feeling he had during development of The Last Story.

Final Fantasy Legends: Hikari to Yami no Senshi (“Warriors of Light and Darkness”) is coming soon to a (Japanese) mobile phone near you. Andriasang reports that the team behind Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is developing an original title set for release in Japan this September. It will have 2D sprite based visuals as well as many traditional Final Fantasy elements and plot details such as crystals, light and darkness, and a job system. Square-Enix also said that “the distribution model of the game’s scenarios will shine a spotlight on the jobs.” Though no mention was made of an international release, a precedence has been set through FFIV: The After Years release on WiiWare.