President of Nintendo Co. Hiroshi Yamauchi quoted in an analysts meeting on the 6th that the software being developed for their hardware by Square's subsidiary- "Final Fantasy", will be released as early as within the year, and that it will be "a ground breaking software to the Japanese game market."

Further on, Yamauchi commented that this title which interweaves the use of both the Nintendo GameCube and GameBoy Advance is "gaining focus from the industry, since it succeeds in the difficult task of cutting down on development time and costs, while its game quality rises".

Also within the meeting, Satoru Iwata- the new Nintendo president, made clear that the market for online games is still too premature at this point and that Nintendo has no plans to release online game software until there are estimates that they can make equal sales to standalone software. Iwata set Square's "Final Fantasy XI" as an example, citing that its sales estimate is 200-300 thousand copies, nearly one tenth the sales of a usual Final Fantasy title.

The analysts meeting concentrated on Yamauchi's retirement, and the new company structure under the succeeding president.

In related news, Square has announced in their press release [ Link ] that Final Fantasy XI for the PC is scheduled for release within the late fiscal 2002 year, and that the damages due to the problems since its PS2 launch are estimated at 80-100 million Yen. Other titles scheduled are Front Mission for WonderSwan Color, and 2 RPG & 1 action game for the Playstation 2. The GBA title is "Final Fantasy Tactics (tentative name)".