Remember that lovely demo of Final Fantasy XIII that Japan received bundled with Advent Children Complete last month? Unfortunately Square Enix says that will not be leaving Japan. Producer Yoshinori Kitase had this to say about it:

“The type of demo version we released in Japan, we currently have no plan of doing that abroad, partly because we are going to carry on with the project alongside the Xbox version, so we really can’t just make it available only for the PS3.”

However not all is lost, as he goes on to say:

“But we hear that the demo version normally means something that you can download in the West, so that is a possibility we would like to check.”

Although the game does not have an official release date yet, it is expected to hit Japan at the end of this year. If that is the case, based on the sped up localization process, we could have a demo around that same time. Here is hoping.

[via Videogamer]

Many people are expecting a late release for the highly anticipated Final Fantasy XIII for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. However today we learned that Square Enix is doing everything it can to minimize the localization process, and thus the amount of time inbetween the Japanese, US, and European releases. According to Videogamer, Producer Yoshinori Kitase breifly talks of their plans:

“Obviously we would like to release it over here as soon as possible. Traditionally the Final Fantasy numbered series, it takes about half a year between the release in Japan and the release in North America, and another half a year before it’s released in Europe. But we would like to minimize this, this time.

“For example we have already started recording English voices, and also the text localization has been in progress, too. Normally we complete the Japanese version first, then move on to the US and EU versions, but this time there are some tasks that are happening simultaneously. So this time we’re hoping to release sooner than a year later than the Japanese release.”

“We would like to make the gap as short as possible.”