Ben-DutkaJust as a personal note, I distinctly recall pre-purchasing Final Fantasy VIII a full year in advance. The only additional tidbit of this story worth mentioning was the fact that the game did indeed come out on the very day that EB had in its database.
If you wander into your local GameStop this weekend, you may want to drop five bucks on Final Fantasy XIII , which is now available for pre-order. Obviously, you can't really expect them to have the finalized written-in-stone launch date, but just for the record, it's June 21, 2010. However, given what we know, that date may be more accurate than you think: if FFXIII really does launch in Japan towards the end of this year, and the localization process takes the normal 6-8 months, June 21 appears to be a fitting date for North America. If you're not a big fan of GameStop, you can also pre-order the game at Amazon, but their estimated release date is a bit more discouraging: December 21, 2010. Both retailers make it clear that dates are subject to change, and if you want a chuckle, check out GameStop's disclaimer ; something about the Roman numerals always throwing them off. The only real upside to this is that we're relatively certain Square-Enix will toss in some sort of pre-order incentive, so perhaps you can get the jump on whatever that turns out to be.
Final Fantasy XIII is guaranteed to be one of the biggest 2010 releases, but let's not forget that the online Final Fantasy XIV is scheduled to release next year, too…
Related Game(s): Final Fantasy XIII
