Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada’s recent comments about whether or not the company would continue to internally create Final Fintasy XIII-type games have been a puzzle to the actual team creating the game.

In a chat over at PlayStation.Blog, the game’s producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Motomu Toriyama said they “don’t know exactly what he meant by that. We don’t really know what he meant by ‘this style of game’.”

To offer some context, last month Wada said that he believes Final Fantasy XIII “is going be something special, and that it’s going to be well received by the audience. But whether we are going to continue to internally create this type of game remains to be seen” — words that brought on the confusion for the FF team who say, “If you consider that during Final Fantasy XIII’s development, at peak time the team consisted of over 300 people. It was a huge team, plus it took a several long years to get the game finished. So, if Mr. Wada meant that we would never make another Final Fantasy title with the similar number of people, taking as long as FFXIII did, we would agree.”

“Obviously in the future we want to be much more efficient,” they continue. “Having worked on XIII, we feel that we have got much better at making good games for high definition consoles. In the future our teams will be smaller and more effectively run. We suspect that is what Mr. Wada meant by his statement.”

We suspect otherwise though. The CEO was quite clear with his words. “Internally and externally I feel there’s an expectation of Square Enix to offer something new, and I really think that the Final Fantasy team could create something completely different,” Wada said.

Update: Looks like Blue’s News got an answer. “As of right now a PC sku is not in the plan,” an EA rep is quoted as saying. Odd to say the least, considering the game was announced for the system just two months ago.

Original story: Yesterday’s news-filled EA SEC filing also brought news of the sad kind, especially to those who enjoyed the first Dead Space on their PCs; according to EA’s fiscal year 2011 releases outline, Dead Space 2 can not be played on the mouse and keyboard controlled system when it releases in the company’s Q4 fiscal 2011 (January - March 2011).

The game was announced for Xbox 360, PlayStation as well as PC though, and EA’s US press site still has the game down for a PC release. So it may well be a mistake. We’ve contacted EA for clarification.

Update: Looks like the PC version may be released at a different time. “PS3 and 360 coming out at the same time. More PC details later,” the game’s community developer Kimi Matsuzaki tweets.

Original story: ..as no doubt quickly deciphered from the image above, a new Ghost Recon game. Called Ghost Recon: Future Soldier as the trademark filing last year suggested, the title is once more in development at Ubisoft’s Paris studio which, after working on both GRAW and GRAW 2, is already well acquainted with the tactical shooter series.

The announcement doesn’t offer much information about the game except for the usual “unparalleled level of quality,” “state-of-the-art single-player and multiplayer modes” chatter but it does bring news of a multiplayer beta. For a limited time, those who buy Splinter Cell: Conviction for the Xbox 360 will get access to the beta (no platforms specified) that will happen sometime this summer.

A teaser trailer for the game should be up on Xbox Live today and on the web tomorrow. And Ubisoft hints that there’s more news to come.

Future Soldier is out worldwide in holiday 2010 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

With Microsoft and Sony having a battle of technology this generation, movie rental giant Netflix has taken Nintendo’s side with concerns to the non-importance of HD in streaming movies. Steve Swasey, vice president of corporate communications at Netflix, downplayed the effect of streaming movies in HD during a recent interview with The Wiire in a move to sway Wii owners to give their service a try despite hardware limitations.

“The HD experience at Netflix Instant Watching isn’t that overwhelming. It’s a little bit underwhelming, so the Wii folks aren’t going to miss that much,” Swasey said. “PS3 and Xbox users have 1 in 17 titles available in HD, and it’s streamed in 720… it’s not in 1080, and it’s not in 5.1 surround sound or anything.”

While it may seem odd to hear a company downplay their services for other platforms, the sheer number of Wii owners is an attractive sales audience.

“26 million homes in America have a Wii. That’s a whole lot of folks,” Swasey added. “We think that the desirability of watching movies instantly on the Wii via Netflix is a wonderful opportunity for Wii homes. And so we think it’s going to be very well adopted.”

Netflix will be available for the Wii sometime this Spring and will require a disc similar to the PS3 service.

Whether you like your God-sim old testament vengeful or new testament cuddly; it looks as though Wonderland Software’s debut title, GodFinger, has got you covered. Developed by former Lionhead devs, GodFinger looks set to bring the same Black and White brand of divine intervention to the increasingly popular iPhone and iPod Touch. Allowing players to terraform, flood, rain lightning and generally just ruin their unsuspecting followers’ days, all on the go.

The accompanying video outlines a handful of the ways players will be able to mess with their peculiarly devout followers when the game eventually hits the App Store.

EA has two exciting shooters in the bag for 2010 in the form of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Medal of Honor, which will be hitting before the holiday season. So what’s going to keep FPS fans happy at the end of the year? The publisher is lining up Crysis 2, the sequel to 2007’s beautiful PC game, for release on PS3, 360, and PC at the end of the year. EA’s John Schappert noted the title was set for a ‘holiday’ release during the company’s Q3 conference call.

Crysis 2 is raising eyebrows not just for its graphics, but also its appearance on consoles. It’s a first for not only the series, but also co-publisher Crytek, and we’re looking forward to unwrapping it for Christmas this year.

BioWare has announced that their next round of downloadable content for Mass Effect 2 is slated to hit the Cerberus network tomorrow, on February 9 for PC and Xbox 360 users no later than 12pm Mountain Standard Time. The DLC will bring all our Shepards some fancy new Cerberus Assault Armor, giving us a +10 to heavy weapon ammo capacity, shields, and health. Of course, along with armor we need to have a new boomstick, which is being delivered in the form of the M-22a Eviscerator Shotgun, an extended range shotgun with armor piercing loads.

Despite having launched less than a year ago, Free Realms, SOE’s free to play MMO, has since managed to rack up an impressive 8 million registered users according to John Smedly, president of Sony Online Entertainment. This success has been attributed to popular features that place an emphasis on customization, such as easily personalized houses or pets.

“Free Realms is more than just a virtual world for our players; it is a portal for imagination,” expresses Smedly, citing the necessity for developers to create  “the tools that inspire and compel (players) to share their experiences with eight million others.”

When it comes to attracting new players, I’m pretty certain that having the word ‘free’ in your MMO’s name and business model probably doesn’t hurt either.

Last week when news of Nippon Ichi Software’s downright stupefying 97.5% operating loss arrived, I maintained a small amount of optimism that maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Unfortunately for me and the dozens and dozens of other Nippon Ichi fans in the western world, their investors thought it was pretty bad. When the JASDAQ stock exchange opened on Monday, Nippon Ichi’s shares were worth ¥36,200. After a day long fire sale, the shares had plummeted nearly 20% to ¥29,200. It got so bad that JASDAQ put a freeze on the stock to prevent a higher suicide rate among active Nippon Ichi board members.

Things obviously are not looking great for the quirky little publisher, and one might ask themselves in these dark times, “What can I do?” I suggest speaking with your wallet and buying a new copy of a Nippon Ichi game. Of course, Nippon Ichi is infamous for their limited distributions so acquiring a new copy of a Nippon Ichi title after around two weeks can be tricky, but if you find a copy of Disgaea 3 laying around, give it a shot. Just, for the love of god, please do not buy Cross Edge.

Valve’s zombie apocalypse continues, aka Left 4 Dead 2, exceeded publisher EA’s sales expectations last year, CEO John Riccitello said today during a conference call detailing the company’s Q3 fiscal 2010 earnings.

“Left 4 Dead 2, in partnership with Valve, exceeded out expectations with 2.9 million copies sold worldwide on the PC and Xbox 360 through the holiday quarter and in charted in the top 10 in North America according to NPD,” Riccitiello said, with “through the holiday quarter” being the key phrase — no 2010 sales included in that number. And no Steam sales too, probably. We’ll check on that just in case though.