Square Enix: Final Fantasy Versus XIII Isn’t Dead

Square Enix is pushing back on rumors of Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s demise.

Company CEO Yoichi Wada joked about the reports on Twitter last night, remarking that he’d just left a “regular” meeting about the project, and one of the city locations shown was awfully pretty.

"Someone has been spreading a false rumor that Versus has been canceled, it seems," said Wada, according to Siliconera’s translation. "[Laughs.] Just now, we finished our regular Versus meeting. If you could see the city in today’s presentation it would sweep you off your feet."

The lack of any information regarding Tetsuya Nomura’s Final Fantasy Versus XIII in the past few years, combined with Square Enix’s decision to apparently just keep producing more direct sequels to Final Fantasy XIII, made Kotaku’s report about its cancellation a believable one, though apparently a false one. We'll have to see.

The easiest way to convince skeptics Final Fantasy Versus XIII is alive and kicking would be to show the long-promised game, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer for that.

Both a Final Fantasy 25th anniversary event and Tokyo Game Show are scheduled for the next few months.

Of course it isnt, though the likely hood of it being called Versus XIII when its released is slim. I bet it is secretly FFXV

If it's so sweeping of feet, why aren't ya showing it? EH?

What's in a number? Besides math.

Honestly I thought it looked kind of cool. But I do like Kingdom Hearts, I think the fighting was kind of like that from what I've seen. Good to hear its not dead.

Oh Kotaku you're the worst.

Sad to see that I actually believed the rumor due to Square being so quiet about this title. I hope they show something soon.

@patrickklepek, you attached this article to the Nomura page, not the Tetsuya Nomura page.

"The lack of any  information regarding Tetsuya Nomura ’s Final Fantasy Versus XIII in the past few years"

Oh, they have meetings. How reassuring.

Good to hear, just hope the final product reflect the grand ambitions they set for it previously.

The lack of any information regarding Tetsuya Nomura’s Final Fantasy Versus XIII in the past few years

A trailer actually showing gameplay last year doesn't count as information "in the past few years"? OK. Obviously they've been pretty quiet on it since then but saying we haven't had any information "in the past few years" is factually wrong given that trailer.

@Recall said:

Of course it isnt, though the likely hood of it being called Versus XIII when its released is slim. I bet it is secretly FFXV

I agree. The whole cross universe thing they tried with the FF13 games was just a mess. I'd be surprised if it still kept the "13" name after TGS.

Well Duh?! Anyone who believed the whole "And they won't mention it to make the game slowly fade away" and then just ignored the fact that a song from Versus was offered for DLC in Theatrhythm were just fooling themselves.

Not sure why, but I was kind of happy about it being cancelled. Maybe I would feel quite a bit better if they stopped using such weird titles. While XIII was not without certain appeal (fast combat system and pretty visuals/art), last one I cared about was XII. Now, the whole series became irrelevant to me. On the other hand, I'd really like to play remastered older titles again.

One does simply not trust Kotaku.

Oh, the rumor came from Kotaku? No wonder it was bullshit.

I guess this is good news for people who are not me and actually care about Final Fantasy still.

lol at the idiots who spread the rumors like mad.As usual goes to show how is easy is to trick and confuse gullible people.

Given the games dev cycle began far later from the announcement, the most impressive thing of the game will definitely be the CG cutscenes.But at this point,it's like ff12 all over again.It would be better just to wait and spend extra year on polishing gameplay then release it on next gen system.You can bet your money that there will be a strong difference between that.

It will be interesting to see when will Kingdom Hearts 3 finally come out. 2020 ?

@Packie said:

@Recall said:

Of course it isnt, though the likely hood of it being called Versus XIII when its released is slim. I bet it is secretly FFXV

I agree. The whole cross universe thing they tried with the FF13 games was just a mess. I'd be surprised if it still kept the "13" name after TGS.

FFXV is actually FFVII-2 in disguise, because FF 7 and a 1/2 times 2 equals FF15....

so it went from people not caring about it dying to people not caring about it not dying. Great!

If Square were smart they would just move this game to be Final Fantasy 15, put out a FF7 remake in between make alot of money and take their time on 15 to really put them selves back in the RPG game.

I can't wait to see what they actually have, I was excited about this game when they were still rolling out stuff for it. 
 
In other news, I'm just going to assume that Type 0 is never coming out here. 

Maybe they haven't shown it in a while because when they do it'll be totally different and amazing. Here's to hoping!

I really wish the would just leave all this FFXIII stuff in the past and move on. Skip to XV already!

XIII is my favorite developer.

@Recall said:

Of course it isnt, though the likely hood of it being called Versus XIII when its released is slim. I bet it is secretly FFXV

Indeed, I'm kinda hoping they do change it. This game looks to be big enough to deserve its own title.

And Final Fantasy XIV came out. It's kinda silly to keep tying this game to XIII when it's so far removed from that game in space and time.

I look forward to the many vapourware jokes this game's prolonged development promises. Every generation of gamers deserves their own Daikatana or DNF.

I wonder when SE will stop numbering their FF games. It just seems silly when you name your game Final Fantasy XIII-2 etc. Maybe when they hit XX?

@AMyggen said:

I wonder when SE will stop numbering their FF games. It just seems silly when you name your game Final Fantasy XIII-2 etc. Maybe when they hit XX?

XXX

@Sammo21 said:

so it went from people not caring about it dying to people not caring about it not dying. Great!

Wrong.

@OllyOxenFree said:

@AMyggen said:

I wonder when SE will stop numbering their FF games. It just seems silly when you name your game Final Fantasy XIII-2 etc. Maybe when they hit XX?

I wanna see that Final Fantasy XXX, bro!

Beat you to it.

I wonder when SE will stop numbering their FF games. It just seems silly when you name your game Final Fantasy XIII-2 etc. Maybe when they hit XX?

I think they should spend their time convincing me that Square-enix itself isn't dead.

Fuck yes!

And fuck you, Kotaku.

And those meetings include: How do we cancel this?

Wow lucky~

@Sammo21: speak for yourself

So... is this going to be on the next gen of consoles, or this gen?

I have to imagine with Sony (wisely) not continuing the cell processor next gen, that if this game were to be on the next consoles, that would require a lot of rewriting of the code. If they made that decision, I hope they made it a long time ago.

@Phatmac said:

Sad to see that I actually believed the rumor due to Square being so quiet about this title. I hope they show something soon.

My thoughts exactly. There are other great games that make the waiting easier, but I'm slowly running out of patience...

What a thoroughly ridiculous project.

Six years. Six years is longer than most generations last. This would be like showing the trailer the week the Playstation 1 is released and then dispelling rumors that it's been cancelled the week the Playstation 2 was released.

[Laughs]

I bet the term is "shifted development to another division." Japanese developers team spends way too much time on 3DS and PSP that they come off like cave men banging away at rocks when it comes to 360, PS3 and PC.

I still don't think this is ever going to see the light of day. Maybe Gearbox will put it out in 2020.

oh right, this game still exist/being made

What a thoroughly ridiculous project.

Six years. Six years is longer than most generations last. This would be like showing the trailer the week the Playstation 1 is released and then dispelling rumors that it's been cancelled the week the Playstation 2 was released.

Just make the game so he can move on to KH3 so I can stop caring about the KH series.

If they want us to believe it still exists then show us the game.

Regular Versus Meetings? Feh. 6 hours of strippers and cocaine, plus 5 minutes of working on the game, does not mean this game is still alive Yoichi Wada ;)

We should know by now not to trust Kotaku. But I actually thought that cancelling it would have been the right move.

Classic vaporware

"Hey guys, we're just going to get fired once we finish the game... so let's not finish the game. They've invested too much money into this to stop now. I can think of a dozen different features that could keep us busy for years."

When was this game first announced? Games like this and The Last Guardian get these potentially false cancellations because they're announced way too early and then they go dark for years and years. If they turn up, and I still have my suspicions, it's likely to be largely different from what was described during those first reveals. That's not a bad thing, but it underscores how rumors can circulate in the absence of information.

@OllyOxenFree said:

@AMyggen said:

I wonder when SE will stop numbering their FF games. It just seems silly when you name your game Final Fantasy XIII-2 etc. Maybe when they hit XX?

I wanna see that Final Fantasy XXX, bro!

I've seen that on the internet already. It was sticky.