Motomu Toriyama and Tetsuya Nomura are currently working away in Square Enix's Shinjuku office on two of the biggest PS3 titles for the next couple of years: Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII. While there hasn't been much in the way of new information since both games debuted at this year's E3, Dengeki PS3, a one-time publication released to coincide with the Japanese PS3 launch, managed to score some commentary from the two.
Toriyama, director of FFXIII, commented a bit on the differences between the PS2 and PS3 versions of the game. FFXIII was originally in development for the PS2, but underwent a platform change following May 2005.
There is apparently very little shared between the two versions. The graphical elements that were prepared for the PS2 couldn't be used, explained Toriyama. "The areas that we kept are the Fabula Nova Crystallis world, the pieces of the mythology related to FFXIII, and the character details. On the other hand, the battle and gameplay systems were restarted from scratch when production moved to the PS3."
The development staff also underwent some changes. "During development for the PS2, the staff was centered on the Final Fantasy X-2 team. However, in an effort to work with the new PS3 hardware, many new staff members are now taking part."
