Morning Coffee E3 Edition - July 15th 2008

E3 has begun and there's no shortage of news, so here's a round-up of some of my favourite links from the conference:

• As you're probably aware (you can't call yourself a gamer if you aren't!) Square Enix has announced Final Fantasy XIII will be released for the 360. MTV Multiplayer attended the Square Enix press conference where a Q&A session was held. Here are some of the questions and answers.
• Major Nelson discusses some of the new features of the planned Xbox Live update. These include; storing a game on the hard drive so it'll run smoother, the ability to purchase stuff on the Xbox Live marketplace from any web enabled device, and (YES!!!!!!!) 1680x1050 support through VGA and HDMI.
• Portal: Still Alive is coming to Xbox Live Arcade!
• Gamespy has an excellent Fallout 3 preview.
• ...and more on EA's Dead Space.
• If you missed it here's Gamespot's coverage of the EA press conference.
• ...and here's what Will Wright said about Spore at that very press conference.
• Gamespot has some impressions of the intriguing Xbox Live 'MMO' quiz game 1 vs 100 (we have a version of the TV show over here in the UK, done by the National Lottery).
• Sim Animal? Ok.....

Um, we'll finish on that last one. More news coming your way soon!

Final Fantasy XIII is Coming to the Xbox 360!

I totally didn't see this one coming!

I've just been watching the Microsoft E3 press conference and in a cringe-worthy moment of 'I forgot to say this' Yoichi Wada of Square Enix showed a trailer announcing that Final Fantasy XIII is going to be released on the 360.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEEESSSSSSSSS!!!

I now have absolutely no reason to buy a PS3. Sony is going to be more than a tad bit annoyed at this.

I have more thoughts on the press conference (which was pretty lacklustre to be honest) coming up soon.

UPDATE: Here's the E3 trailer.

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core Trailer.

Square Enix continue to milk the Final Fantasy VII franchise like there's no tomorrow although recent attempts have been somewhat lacklustre (Dirge of Cerberus). One iteration has received a bit of my attention, however, mostly because it gives some loving to the much ignored PSP.

Despite the lack of quality in YouTube videos this trailer truly shows off the astounding quality the PSP can achieve in terms of graphics, which has always been sadly ignored due to a lack of 'fun' in most PSP games. However, I'm willing to give this one a try although I probably won't be playing this before FFXII hits European shores.

Speaking of FFXII the battles in Crisis Core seem to be of a similar affair, but I'll reserve my thoughts on the new MMO style angle the Final Fantasy series has taken until I can play the latest game.