Square Enix Message Board older than one year ago

#hitman We've featured Joey Logano, the driver who races the No. 20 GameStop Toyota in NASCAR's Nationwide Series, several times before. He's had some awesome car wraps before, hoods dedicated to Bioshock 2 or Red Dead Redemption—things that still look a little strange turning left at 120 mph. More »

United Front Games' Sleeping Dogs seems awfully reminiscent of another open-world, minigame-filled action game with a connection to another well-known Asian mafia, but we just can't seem to put our finger on it. Perhaps you can help identify the mystery inspiration?

#sleepingdogs I may be crazy for looking forward to United Front's upcoming open-world action game but Sleeping Dogs looks like it's going to scratch a particular Hong-Kong-gangster-cinmea itch of mine. It also looks like it's throwing elements designed to appeal to every possible sort of taste. More »

Quantum Conundrum's more than just fluffy pillows and super heavy stuff. It's also all about ripping apart space and time itself at your whim, with the helpful aid of a glove-enabled "shift device," as demonstrated in the trailer above.

#finalfantasy Most modern-day gamers know or at least know ofFinal Fantasy 7. The monster hit that single-handedly brought the Playstation into the fore-ground and secured its place for years to come. Now, 15 years after its initial release, director Yoshinori Kitase has released some of the few remaining development notes to the Weekly Famitsu. More »

#finalfantasy Not for Square Enix. Final Fantasy VII character designer and current Square Enix bigwig spoke with Japanese game magazine Famitsu about the much desired FFVII. More »

#finalfantasy One of the greatest things about PC gaming is the ability to modify games. Since Doom, fan-made sprites, levels, and even tweeks to gameplay can be found for any number of classic and modern PC titles. Recently, games like Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age have received amazingly detailed texture packs for all their characters, improving the graphics incredibly. More »

#kingdomhearts Here's an English-language trailer for the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, for the Nintendo 3DS. Throwing Disney and Square Enix is still resulting in pretty much exactly what you'd expect it would. More »

We're all for a good bit of Hong Kong-style fisticuffs, but why would you ever slam a guy's face into an active table saw? That's totally uncalled for, Sleeping Dogs guy!

Square Enix's financial results for fiscal 2012 have been posted, and thanks to the releases of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Final Fantasy XIII-2, the developer has ended the year in the black, to the tune of a ¥6.06 billion (or $75.9 million) profit.

Total income from sales for the fiscal year, which for Square Enix ran from April 2011 through March 2012, totaled up to ¥127.89 billion ($1.6 billion) - a 2.1 percent year-over-year increase. After subtracting taxes and operating costs, the company was left with over ¥6 billion in profit, which must be welcome news for stockholders still feeling the sting from Square Enix's ¥12.04 billion ($150.86 million) loss in fiscal 2011.

"In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2012, we continued our efforts aimed at increasing profitability, including establishing best practices for the content in said growth areas, improving quality of our major online game, and strengthening our global structure," said Square Enix president Yoichi Wada in a statement accompanying the financial report. "We are accelerating the reformation to generate a substantial earnings improvement in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013 and beyond."

Obviously by now, everyone is applying what I assume is known as the Walker Principle, which states whatever first release date is given for a major game is to be ignored. So no one will be in the least surprised, let alone disappointed, to learn that Tomb Raider now won’t be with us until 2013.

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#timetravelers For the Final Fantasy role-playing games, the logos are iconic. You can spot them a mile away and immediately recognize them. Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIII is no exception, which makes this kwinky-dink all the more noticeable. More »

The younger, dirtier and unvarnished version of Lara Croft still needs some polish, according to Crystal Dynamics. The developer is pushing back the release date of the next Tomb Raider, from Fall 2012 into the first quarter of 2013. (Yes, the same quarter that now hosts another one of 2012's former heavy hitters, Bioshock Infinite.)

"Our priority now is to make sure we fully deliver the very highest quality game," Crystal Dynamics Head Darrell Gallagher wrote. In a missive posted on the game's official forums, Gallagher shared the studio's push to make Tomb Raider "the best game of our careers." The delay will boost quality up to "a level that you deserve," he said.

The shift in release date has also given us an unexpected sense of optimism. If enough promising games get pushed into next year, we might actually start rooting for the world's continued existence beyond 2012.

#deusex One of the best-loved games ever will be hitting the PlayStation Network, as Deus Ex gets released as a download in Europe next week. More »

Confirming the leak from Tuesday, Square Enix has announced the Hitman: Sniper Challenge as a pre-order bonus for Hitman: Absolution. The challenge will be available beginning May 15 at GameStop for those who pre-order Absolution, which will take its shot at retail on November 20. A Steam version of the Sniper Challenge will be available August 1, with details on how to gain access coming later.

The Sniper Challenge is a standalone experience, with Agent 47 tasked with taking out a mark and all his bodyguards from a rooftop. Efficiency is key and will grant score multipliers and unlock equipment upgrades (some which will transfer to Absolution). Progress of the best snipers will be tracked on a leaderboard and the best of the best snipers in North America will win a trip for two to Copenhagen, Denmark, where they will meet the Hitman development team.

...or they'll be drafted by the CIA into some La Femme Nikita situation.

Agent 47 isn't doing a very good job with that whole sneaking around thing, as we found out pretty easily this morning that his next game, Hitman: Absolution, launches November 20.

Publisher Square Enix announced the date this morning alongside news that pre-orders will get access to a ... whole other Hitman title. Not too shabby!

#hitman The next Hitman game will be out on November 20 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, Square Enix said today in a press release. More »

#kingdomhearts It has been over a month since Kingdom Hearts 3D was released, and with no news on Final Fantasy XIII Versus other than the standard "stay tuned," Weekly Famitsu asked director Tetsuya Nomura in an interview if Kingdom Hearts 3 was on the horizon. More »

#kingdomhearts Speaking with Game Informer Magazine, Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura said that while he's always interested in making Kingdom Hearts games on new systems like the Vita, "It's about time that Kingdom Hearts should go back to being on a console." More »

#legal Never mind that Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days was first released nearly two years ago (or that it was a bit of a turd), one lawyer in China sure is pissed. More »

#finalfantasy You thought Tidas from Final Fantasy X had an awful laugh? Have you heard the original Japanese version? More »

#finalfantasy Final Fantasy Versus XIII is a game that exists. But for players, it exists only in screenshots and trailers. And has so for many, many years. More »

#review To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Metal Gear franchise, Square Enix and Konami have teamed up to release a bunch of figures based on the venerable stealth series. Today, we're taking a look at two of them. More »

The Hitman folks probably should've stuck the word "assassin" somewhere in their game title, that way they could avoid embarrassing marketing moments. Take, for instance, the trailer above's insistence that Agent 47 is the "original" assassin. Doesn't his blood-soaked legacy speak for itself? Apparently not!

#hitman Now that's a question that you'll only hear in a video game trailer. Or at least I hope you only hear it in a video game trailer. I bet Hitman: Absolution's Agent 47 gets that all the time. More »

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light has been generally recognized as a great downloadable game that should be played by as many people as possible, which is why we're confused about its launch on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Get it? Because no one owns a PlayBook.

That's not true, we realize, but all is fair in love and bad comedy. Already a few happy PlayBookers and/or RIM and Square Enix employees have left gushing reviews on Guardian of Light's App World page, suggesting it's a solid experience even two years out and even on PlayBook. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is available now for $3.99 via the BlackBerry App World.

#catacombs Square Enix has been working on an RPG-slash-shooter called Catacombs, gaming site Siliconera reports today. More »

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, one of the best games of 2011, is on super sale this week through Amazon's digital distribution service for PC. The Standard Edition of the cyber stealth thriller is $6.99, while the Augmented Edition, which includes art book and soundtrack, is a dollar more for $7.99.

Also on discount is Dungeon Siege 3, which has reviews that start in the 80s and go south from there (we thought it was good), but for $5 it's not a heavy investment to try out for yourself.

PC players who are interested in further discounts should check out Amazon's new "Weekly Deal Vote." PC titles were recently added and the hive mind decides what game will drop to $5 next week.

Raziel has been to many strange and wonderful places, but until now, he's never been to Good Old Games. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is now available on the service for a paltry $6. Soul Reaver tells the tale of a betrayed vampire-turned-revenant, Raziel, and his vengeance against those who wronged him.

It also sports a top-notch voice cast and, hey, it's fun to play. If you missed it the first time around (or if you feel like reliving it again), it's definitely worth checking out.

The bald and bar-coded Agent 47 isn't the only character in Hitman: Absolution, you know. The latest trailers introduce us to Benjamin Travis and Jade - members of 47's employer, "The Agency" - and the actors who play them.