Cubed³ had a chance recently to get some information out of Square-Enix senior VP Hiromichi Tanaka on Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross, and the company's relationship with Nintendo. Some of the more interesting points:
Tanaka was visiting Europe to promote the upcoming release of Final Fantasy III for DS, as well as the French and German releases of Final Fantasy XI—not appearing on Nintendo platforms.
- Though he did not say explicitly, Tanaka "wryly smiled" when asked if the Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary project would bring games to Nintendo systems.
- Chrono Trigger has about a 50-50 chance of appearing on the Virtual Console, subject to a working-out of copyright details with members of the original team, many of whom are no longer with S-E.
- Final Fantasy XI will not be appearing on Wii. The official line is that the system is not powerful enough (which seems rather bizarre on its face, as the title originally appeared on Sony's last-generation PlayStation 2), but Tanaka also complained of Nintendo's restrictive online stance being an issue.
- Final Fantasy III is expected to be recieved well in Europe, and the 3-D remake was made so to appeal to Western markets. The "Moogle Mail" online feature was apparently limited in the interests of keeping the title more true to the NES original.
Tanaka was visiting Europe to promote the upcoming release of Final Fantasy III for DS, as well as the French and German releases of Final Fantasy XI—not appearing on Nintendo platforms.