[GameSpot Japan, Mainichi Interactive] Square president Hisashi Suzuki has announced that the first shipment of Final Fantasy X counts at 2.41 million copies; pre-orders accounted for 1.4 - 1.5 million of the first shipment. The announcement was made at Final Fantasy X's release ceremony featuring music composer Nobuo Uematsu and RIKKI, at the Shinjuku Virgin Megastore.

In addition, Suzuki quoted;
"The situation is similar to that of Final Fantasy 7. The game did not sell well since the PS was a new hardware, but the game sold for a long time together with the PS console. Hopefully Final Fantasy 10 will take the same path."

"The foreign versions will begin after the development team returns from their vacation. Voice dubbing for the US version will be done first. The release will be aimed for the end or beginning of the year, but it may be difficult. The European version will have 5 languages, but it will probably be dubbed in English and have subtitles in each language. The release time for the European version is undecided."

Square has announced to begin testing of their "Play Online" service's Best version. 500 openings are allowed for entry to test online games and media contents on Square's network and report for issues and bugs concerning the services. The sign-up area to become a a tester will be available from 8/2 at Square's playonline.com site. Actual testings will begin from mid-September.

Required items to become a tester goes as follows:
1- PC or Macintosh with Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher (Required for reporting errors)
2- A mail address which is not free-mail or cell phone mail.
3- Playstation 2, PS2 Memory Card, PS2 HDD, PS2 compatible Modem (USB mouse, Keyboard, Hub is optional)

For more details, check PlayOnline.com's POL (Play OnLine) section.

General Japanese news site Techside has released a comparison demo of Final Fantasy X, with and without the PS2 HDD. For the demo, check the site's footage.

Short Comment- The HDD is from the PS2 Linux kit, and not the retail version. I don't think it should make much difference, though. The webmaster comments that it took about 12 minutes to install, and ate up about 1792 megs of HDD space. -H. Moriarty

Special thanks to Whitesword for the news.

Korean gaming site Ruliweb has released the demo footage of Final Fantasy XI, from Final Fantasy X's bonus disk "Other side of the Final Fantasy". The footage is 46MB, mpg format.

For the footage, check the site's section.

Short Comment- I haven't checked it out yet, but people are telling me that it doesn't exactly look too great. Quoted by the Webmaster of Techside, "The only thing saving it is the scene where a monster is eating a Pikmin." LoL. -H. Moriarty

Korean gaming site Ruliweb has released the demo footage of Disney- Kingdom Hearts, from Final Fantasy X's bonus disk "Other side of the Final Fantasy". The footage is 60MB, mpg format.

For the footage, check the site's section.


Short Comment- Man, that's really Goofy. . ... . .. . I mean, the character.. not the game. Yeah. -H. Moriarty

Korean gaming site Ruliweb has released five footage of Final Fantasy X, ranging from battle scenes to events.

For the footage, check the site.


Short Comment- As some people may have realized, Ruliweb's webmaster was gone on the 18th to get his copy of FFX. The Webmaster sure returned quickly back on net with all these videos. Wow. -H. Moriarty