When it was announced at E3 2008 that Final Fantasy XIII would be developed for Japanese PS3 owners first, that left some in the West worried that they would have to wait many months for the game to be localized and optimized for the Xbox 360. Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase, however, said to 1UP at Gamescom that a large delay between the Japanese and Western releases isn't likely to happen.
Kitase said that the Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII is now roughly 70 percent done, though the debugging process hasn't begun yet. The English voice acting for the game is being recorded and Square Enix is making sure the lip synching is correct with the game's detailed facial models. Kitase noted that the Japanese version of Final Fantasy XIII is 90 percent done and they are wrapping up the game's development.
Indeed, he noted to VG247 that the release schedule for Final Fantasy XIII has been firmed up. “We don’t have the actual month down yet, but in Japan it’s scheduled for a winter release, and in Europe and North American territories it’s spring 2010,” said Kitase. “For Europe and North America, the PS3 and 360 versions are going to be released simultaneously.”
Conscious of the long layovers between Japanese releases and Western releases in the past, the development team started worked on the American and European versions of the game before the Japanese version has even released. “For previous titles it took usually about a year to localize each version and bring it over to Europe," Kitase acknowledged. "But for this title there should be a considerably shorter gap and [we'll] bring it to European territories as close to the North American release as possible.”
So Xbox 360/PS3 owners will be able to pick up the game at the same time, which will reportedly be nearly identical on either system. The Xbox 360 version is expected to ship on three DVDs, while the PS3 version will come on a single Blu-ray disc.
