Worrying news and exciting previews

Old Final Fantasy mind-head, Hironobu Sakaguchi, or “The Gooch” as his friends and Diff’rent Strokes fans like to call him, has elaborated a bit more on his first Xbox 360 RPG Blue Dragon. It seems they’re really coming down to the wire to meet their launch date. While reading this I wonder if The Gooch isn’t just trying to get some more cash out of Microsoft. MS Japan really needs Blue Dragon to come out, somewhat on time. At first the game was promised before November 4th, now it’s slated for December 7th. So if Blue Dragon doesn’t make it out before 2007 sees the light of day MS Japan may loose what little credibility they have with the public. With The Gooch saying that they’re only at 90% complete now makes you wonder if that’s just his way of trying to get MS to shell out a little extra cash to help with development. My prediction: The Gooch wants the MS money but regardless of whether he gets it or not Blue Dragon will be released Christmas week and it’ll take a whole year for Blue Dragon to reach our North American shores.

Also Gamespot has a Final Fantasy 12 preview up, with lots of gameplay movies. I was disappointed to see that you’ll only be able to have 3 to 4 characters on screen at any given time. The MMORPG style of battle looks fine, if somewhat joyless. And was happy to note that they were pleased with the voice acting.