Probably cause more people have a cell phone in Japan than they do have a PSP. Which is true, since cell phones in Japan can do just about anything, you can put credit in it and use it to pay for food at 7/11 and vending machines. You can surf the web, and just about every person who has a job needs a cell phone.

Which makes it even more xenophobic since they know its a trend and technology that's only avalaible in Japan.

This is a bit of a shock o_O. I swear, SE is shooting itself in the foot in regards to their non-Japanese markets. They have to be aware of PE's fanbase in the states, and they are quite obviously abandoning them. I mean, playing games on a cell phone is a fun diversion when you have nothing else, but damn, that's what the PSP and DS are for. A mobile port, like say Oblivion and Saints Row did, would be a viable thing, but a full-blown sequel? Shoot me now.

I would love to have one of them phones myself, but from what I know it won't work here (you can play games, but no phone calls)

Like I said, strictly Japan, not even the Hong Kong or Taiwanese gamer geeks can get their hands on it. You're gonna need to get online through the phone to play it in the first place, meaning even if you got a useless phone that you can't talk on from Japan, you will need to be IN Japan to get the game in the first place. And who the hell is gonna buy a phone that won't work anywhere else?

well somebody need to get off there ass and make this tech work outside japan or just make a emulator for it and call it a day.

I see even Aya is suicidal over the announcement. Bravo SE.

ROFL I guess I would be to if I were her :P

DUDE METAL SPHERE. BEST PIC EVER. DID YOU MAKE IT? LOL.

Nah, I got it from meltdown thread over on GAF. I expected people to be upset or struck dumb by this move by SE, but they were just over the top. It's one reason why I said the only thing that could get more fans upset would be if FFVI/VII were remade on phones. At least we got a nice trailer for Crystal Bearers out of this party, eh?

BTW, nice catch with the picture, Simo. Even ole Aya isn't up for this. :tpg:

In all fairness, cellphone gaming is almost as popular as the DS here, people hardly do anything else than use the damn thing when they are in the line for something and riding the subway.

What sucks more is that Square chose only ONE of the three major players on the market, and it just happens to be the mos expensive one for students (AU KDDI is really cheap with the student discount, only like 20 dollars a month if you don't use the internet). The other players have started to allow games on their phones, I've at least seen some advertisements for Before Crisis and Pied Piper, but those are only available for a few specific models which happen to cost quite a lot more than normal phones.

Some providers have phones that CAN be used outside Japan (AU KDDI has a Nokia cell that supports the Japanese 3G network), but as far as I know, they don't have the same features as the JP-exclusive phones, and you can't play games on them.

Fine. I accept the fact that the Japanese LOEV phones, but Americans generally do not equate a phone with games. They might equate phones with music & taking photos (Thanks to all the new models out + Verizon's recent commercials & such), but the best thing would be for Square Enix to do this:

Port PE3 to the DS or PSP for the US/Europe Market.

So they port Parasite Eve 3 to one of the two major handhelds, (I do not know how far behind or advanced the euros cellphones are, just a guess but I bet they aren't like Japan's) and call it a day. Same thing for Before Crisis while they're at it.

Oh well, fat chance of that happening though. The only thing that could happen is that enough people get pissed off and SE gets a clue. It HAS happened rarely before in time.

Except the only people that will get pissed off are people who are NOT from Japan, and Square doesn't really give a crap about them.

As for the more expensive model phones, well, it shows that Square doesn't care about their fanbase either, considering most of them prob can't afford the phones in the first place. Its like an elitist attitude on top of the xenophobe.

Sounds to me that the Western world is slowly being phased out of the gaming market.

No its not, its just phasing out of Square's market. Capcom and Konami has always catered to all markets fairly. I mean when MGS gets a uber special edition, the US gets it as well, for example. Capcom even ported the US version of RE4 to the Asian region code so Asian fans can play it easier, since more people in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China will know more English than Japanese. Asian versions ever hardly happen, but even Sony has done them like for ICO and Colossus, with Chinese subtitles.

No, this is all Square's ridiculous xenophobic doing.

Do you know what xenophobic actually means?

Fear of the foreign. It kinda makes sense for the argument at hand. Square almost does seem afraid to release their best to the non-Japan market. Think about how long it took Square to release FF2 and 3 over here, and think about how many pined for games are still never coming here. It really does seem like Square fears us. Or at least fears the idea of a game not selling well.

Besides, the Japanese are well known as Xenophobes. They even have a term (gaikokujin kyoufu shou) describing it as a medical condition.

In Japan, most video game series spin off cell phone side games. Usually they're tie-ins with console releases, and not years-old games, so if you're really lucky it actually heralds an upcoming announcement, but that's unlikely.

Most likely the franchise is just on the back burner, and this is as much a marketing effort to keep it in the public mind (without spending millions of dollars) in between actual releases, and perhaps used to gauge public desire for a real sequel. If it fails, the series is finished; if it sells wildly, a new game will follow. (If it's just lukewarm, who knows.) Given that this will have no bearing on a future console PE release, unless it does extremely well or badly, why the intense hatred? Just petulant that the market realities of one nation are so different from yours? You can hold on until you get your PE TRIPLE on your PS TRIPLE.

Its more or less the fact that the game has a large non-Japanese fanbase that is getting ignored in the discussion of whether or not a true sequel will be made. I'd say we have good reason to be perturbed.

How many games since the SNES haven't they been releasing stateside?

Umm...congratulations on that trivia? :confused:

If anything you guys should be calling them ethnocentric (or the cultural/national/etc variation) since they seem to only care about the interests of their own people and not the rest of the people.

koifox, they could have easily done the same thing on any other handheld, be it a DS or a PSP. It would have better graphics AND can be sold to different markets. Cell phones means no one else other than the Japanese can play it, and regardless on whether or not we get a console sequel after this, the fact of the matter is that we will never know the story to THIS title and have to rely on translators who are willing to play and translate. A true fan would wanna know any side story of their fav series, why do you think people played KH COM despite it being card based?

This being only on cell phone, regardless if its a side story, a sequel or anything, is a clear sign of xenophobe, or as Racin has also stated, ethnocentric. Other fanbases should have the right to access this, but they chose not to. That's what we're pissed about.

There are games they haven't released, maybe not so much on FFs side, but other franchises like Front Mission, Itaki street, and of course every cell phone game. The real kicker to me is the international releases, like KH2 Final Mix. If Kojima can sell MGS3 Subsistence, why can't Square do the same? Other companies may have not released every title of their franchises, like Castlevaynia, but unlike Square, they are trying to fix it. Square only released titles that related to FF, anything other than that they seem to deem it not worthy enough of a remake or port or re releases.

I should hope it's because it's a good game and not because gamers are consumer whores.

COM is not horrible, but not everyone clicked with the card system. They still played it anyway though, cause they wanna know the story. With this PE sidestory, we can't even try to experience it. Have to rely on fan translations.

Sometimes its both =\

Hopefully this IS just a gauge of how much interest is left in the series, if that's the case, and this cellphone game is like some sort of 'prequel' to the proper console sequel game, then I will be relieved very much.

If it's a lousy game (I mean, how good can a cell phone game be) and you only care about the storyline, why should you be bothered you'll just be getting the game in novel form?

My point is I at least like the OPTION, and we don't even have that.