Square Enix President Yoichi Wada dropped what was likely the biggest bomb in the Microsoft press conference last Monday. Previously PS3-exclusive Final Fantasy XIII, the next sequel in one of the longest-running Japanese RPG series, would be coming to Xbox 360. We and TeamXbox sat down with the game's Director, Yoshinori Kitase, and nebulously-titled "Corporate Executive" Shinji Hashimoto, to find out what was behind the decision to take FF13 multiplatform and whether or not that would affect its development.



"This is HUGE"

GameSpy: So, big news, what fueled the decision to take Final Fantasy XIII out of exclusivity on the PS3?
Corporate Executive Shinji Hashimoto: The decision was basically made when we considered the install base and overseas appeal of the Xbox 360, so we wanted to answer the needs of supplying the game to as many of our fans as possible.
TeamXbox: In terms of the legacy of the series, will this change anything from the players' point of view?
Hashimoto: It's more related to how the gaming industry has changed, because it has always been that one console was the leader with the others following behind. But now, we are in a time when the PS3 and 360 are on the same level and there are so many different platforms for the player to choose from that Final Fantasy must evolve to meet the different needs of those players.

GameSpy: Is there any impact that moving to Microsoft's technology could have on the White Engine, because initially we were told that the PS3 would be the best platform for exploiting what the engine could do.
Director Yoshinori Kitase: Well, the White Engine is actually called the Crystal Tool now, but it's basically the same thing and essentially it's a collection of tools for game development that are necessary for game development. The order of development is that first we will develop FF13 for the PS3 and make it specific to that hardware to try to accommodate all the functionality offered by it and then, after the PS3 version is complete, we are going to develop the Xbox 360 version. So, in that sense, we don't really have much to discuss about the development of the Xbox 360 version right now, but that's the order of our development cycle.