After a little research of the situation I have come across a few things that bother me. Many have bombarded the interwebs with their opinion on the matter. What I have found is....

Have the Fanboys Gone Crazy? Why are They so MAD?

http://www.psu.com/FFXIII-and-Versus-to-Fully-Utilize-PS3-Specs-News--a1911-p0.php

http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor-smash/square-closed-mega-theater-confirms-ff-xiii-ps3-only-302669.php

http://kotaku.com/gaming/this-page-intentionally-left-blank/no-final-fantasy-for-you-xbox-266191.php

-Firstly, it is articles like these that have fans of Sony and FF alike enraged about the whole situation. Sony and FF have been joined at the hip for a very long time. This is why the fans think of them together in such a way(Die Hards at least).   A loss of an exclusive is one less thing that validates one's purchase. I mean if Halo or Mario went multiplat after u purchased a system for it wouldn't you be mad. As A sony fan I believe the game is best on its system, to put it elsewhere is nothing but a slap in Sony's face. If all titles were available on all systems, the winner is predominantly gonna be the cheapest of them, as many only see a price tag. Halo was enough to validate many ppl's purchase of a 360 on RELEASE! FFXIII was that game for many on PS3. Many benchwarmers and 360 owners alike said "Phew! now I DONT have to buy a PS3 for it! YAY!" Which emplies the original plan TO purchase one.

It is completely feasable to be angry when many fan's pride and joy franchise lies to them TWICE in one statement.

1. They promised to be PS3 exclusive many many MANY times over.
   
2. Promised to use full specs of the PS3, something me personally was REALLY looking forward to. Now I must live in a world without a FF that does this (this I can say becuz MGS4 did NOT use full specs of PS3 and developers stated it was not even possible to convert it to other formats, unless for PC).

Fishie! Fishie!

How Do We Know It would look any different?

http://www.psu.com/Final-Fantasy-Versus-XIII-in-game-shots-revealed-News--a2523-p0.php

This is what a EXCLUSIVE FF game looks like. And yes, that is said to be INGAME graphics!

http://kotaku.com/gaming/bff/final-fantasys-nomura-digging-that-ps3-304647.php

This also gives thought to what was FFXIII's true purpose at the begining.

Fishie! Fishie!

SE just wants to make everything even this time right?

Wrong! This was prooven to be invalid once FFXIII went multiplat. There is nothing "EVEN" about them now.

• Infinite Undiscovery:360 Exclusive
• The Last Remnant:Timed 360 Exclusive(originally promised as simaltaneous release)
• Star Ocean 4(originally put as Sony exclusive with no sign of defection, then all of a sudden becomes exclusive to 360?)
• FFXIII multiplat (wtf)
• FF versus XIII: PS3 Exclusive
• So if full exclusives are one point and timed ones are .5 that puts us at....
• 360:2.5 PS3:1.5
• Not to mention the 360 would already be getting Tales games and others. There was no need to give 360 yet ANOTHER game to add to their arsenal to make things "EVEN".

If they wanted to be fair why did they not hold Last Remnant's release as they did FFXIII(a much bigger franchise which ppl have been waiting for for a looooooooooong time). Or for that matter, Why is yet another franchise synonomous with playstation,SO4, 360 exclusive? Why would Square choose a system that has an abismal fanbase for RPGs for some of there new titles(no JRPG on 360 has sold more than a mil yet)?

Fishie! Fishie!

Why the sudden change with SquareEnix Now?

Now this one is a toughy but I will try to answer. Firstly it makes little sense for SE to just decide to do this now. This is the kind of decision a company makes when a product is not selling as expected. But the PS3 is! Wha? Dont believe me, check the front page. The PS3 has been outselling the 360 every month since christmas with the burning potential to constantly do better. If they were having doubts, why not just say that from the get go. It is ludacris to change plans now this late in development, when the stakes were at their highest for Sony and SE.

Fishie! Fishie!

Rumors point to moneyhatting, the most logical answer,but...

Microsoft says they did not Pay for it? Right?

Not quite what they said. I believe they were a tad decieptful in their presentation. observe

http://finalfantasy-xiii.net/2008/07/18/sony-microsoft-bought-final-fantasy-xiii.html

if you look closely Tretton makes a passing remark about MS and their infamous dumptrucks of cash. This is known as MS's trademark already. We KNOW they have done it in the past to get games to go exclusive/timed exclusive for their system(Bioshock, Oblivion,Lost Planet, Eternal Sonata, etc). Why is it so difficult to believe they have done it for a title that holds more berring than all those stated titles combined? So MS will pay for the small fry but not the big cahuna(SP?)?

http://360.kombo.com/article.php?artid=13863

Here is a rep from MS talking about the so called "Rumors". If you pay attention to this guys words, he never actually denies that they paid for it. He simply pushes the conversation into a different direction to steer clear of the topic even though he brought it up(Nice move if I do say so myself).

If Sony says they did, they didn't deny it, and Sony has stock in SE meaning they know where their income is coming from, than all roads point to moneyhatting. The evidence is there.

Then why didnt sony do something about it you ask?

Well SE says the deal was recent, but how recent? Sony has access to SE's financials. MS has not even sent the dev kits for the port yet even now. Do we really think Sony would just stand by and let their BIGGEST exclusive slip by? I think not!

My geuss is MS strategically planned the timing just right. Maybe even DAYS before the E3 conference this deal was put into motion. This gave no time for Sony to react after hearing the news (maybe the day before the conf.)

Fishie! Fishie!

JUMP SHIP! PS3 is goin DOWN!

not really. PS3 is still selling on par with 360 and only can improve. People don't realize that the PS3 can sell withough even having the huge catolog of games the 360 has and being way more exspensive than its competition. The 360 is moving in on the sweet spot(the price range area where a system's sales peak the most) The Wii started out there and sold accordingly. What do you think will happen once the PS3 reaches it? It is gonna blow your mind.

Many tend to say, why get a PS3 when most of the games I like are on the opposite system. This is true, but it works both ways. And the PS3 may cost more, but carries more in the box features that the competition lack or must buy seperately (standard rechargable controller anyone?).

I hear many going "NOw its a matter of time before we get FFVXIII now!lol!" This is more feasable now than ever in the light of the FFXIII thing but think about this. FFXIII is made by a dif director. Nomura is in charge of versus and everyone knows him to be a bit of a PS3 fanboy. Nomura has already shown his disgust with the multiplat deal. He does not believe in multiplat games(rightfully so) and simply would not do it.

So what is to learn from all of this? WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

Simple, MS used their calling card AGAIN. We can argue the basics of moneyhatting's ethics but it leads to the same conclusion.

Now I believe, this is an opinion so dont flame me for it, that MS intention was not even to boost 360 sales with this anouncement. On the contrary, it was to simply hinder PS3 sales as much as possible. The PS3 had been gaining plenty of momentum over the last yr. With the success of MGS4 and the promise of FFXIII on its way soon MS had to act fast if they wanted to stay in the lime light. PS3 lost a valuable exclusive and the 360 went for a price cut at the same time.  And most of 360's conference was spent on blatent rip offs of Sony's franchises as well as Nintendo's. This has slightly boosted 360 sales in the last couple of weeks. And it has also caused the PS3 sales to fall just below 360's.

But my qeustion is, why go for PS3 sales instead of fucusing on your own? Do you see it as a threat? Or do you simply care less of making a serious profit but more on stomping competition into the ground?

Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiishhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!

I say it's this simple. If you want to play and enjoy the game, buy it. Multiplat just means more people can enjoy the game, and share experiences from it. Xbox 360 and PS3 alike. At this point, there is nothing we, the consumer can do. Square-Enix made their decision, obviously a decision that had alot of thought and attention put into it, and was made most likely months prior to E3. So we just need to simply accept it. Move on, and enjoy it on whatever system you want.

Will this affect sales any? Yes, but having thing game can only improve sales, for BOTH systems. I say its win/win!

I don't get it.

You're still talking about it?

Wow.

There are more important things in life than Final Fantasy... (boy, that was hard for me to type)

Like vagina.

You work in a Gamestop. How can you still take this shit so seriously. Every GS employee I know is totally burnt out on the fan boy crap that they hear all day.

....riiiiiight

true, it is good that both get to enjoy the game. But why this game? Why not something that did not have the weight of PS3 riding on it's back? At the E3 conference they said the decision was VERY recent. So months is probably out of the qeustion. Especially seeing as they have not started at all. The game has made many promises as stated in OP, the anouncement of a 360 version broke every single one of them. That is NEVER a good thing...

And sales of the consoles will be effected. PS3 sales will not be as much as expected on day of release for FFXIII now that I would say about 25% of it's fanbase can now play it on a system they already own or is cheaper for them to get. Thats not fair, thats not fair at all, for sony at least. 360 sales I see staying pretty much the same tho so they are still on the upside of this situation.

Underhanded if you ask me. THis has turned to a cock fight instead of a business, measured by who is in the lead.

It will not affect the quality of the PS3 version, as that will have been finished by the time that the 360 version is being started

This all happened a month ago....I can't believe people are still creating threads on this subject!?!?

becuz FF is my most favoritest bestest specialest adordedest game in the whole wide world! Thats why!

Vagina only last for 10 minutes, FF is FOREVER! LOLZ!

And it is becuz I take my job very very seriously, and the gaming world is my world, so this cuts me deep. I also take up Gaming Design in College so this is all I get to talk about ALLLL DAAAAAY! Isnt that awsome?

While this does seem rather unfair in the perspective of sony and PS3 owners. You have to look at the business from both ways. This is a rather pinnacle point in the development of gaming, new ideas are coming and replacing some of the old ideas. Square-Enix just wants to make sure they have the money and the support they need to contiune to make great games in the future. If this means they need to expand their area of influence to multiplatform titles, then that is entirely their choice.

I'd rather see Final Fantasy 13 selling ALOT more copies overall on both systems, than selling fewer on one, or the other. If square-enix was being picky about which one they would make the game for. Then I would bet 5 dollars they would port the entire game to xbox 360 for the larger american userbase. But they don't seem to be picky about which one they want, they just want to ensure they make a decent profit off this game. So they can continue to make more games in the future.

In the business world, you cannot let politics between businesses stand in the way of money. Because that is what it all boil down too, if sony cannot cough up the cash to keep a game exclusive, or if square feels their game will be more successful multiplat. Then so be in. I look forward to upcoming games for all 3 systems by square-enix.

A lot of fish in you foil hat i see.

It doesn't matter is PS3 outselling 360 or not, if the raw sales numbers don't exceed what S-E was expecting.

Another thing to consides about sales is, that first people were talking about Wii selling because of its price. Then 360 had a pricecut and has been 50€ cheaper than Wii for months now - and it still isn't selling any better. Believe me, Sony is learning from M$ and isn't going to cut the price any further, unless manufacturing costs goes low enough, because the pricuts didn't have desired effect. So far we have seen PS360 mostly maintaining their previous sales level with the pricecuts.

And at best, pricecut for PS3 would give it an temporary boost and going below standalone BD players would cause it to eat away sales from the profitable players. So the moment PS3 reaches "sweet spot" (actually i believe it's there already, since i doubt people would pay much more for it and Sony wants to make as much money with it as it can), it's already too late for PS3. And i'm quite certain S-E knows it too.