Square Enix Releases Doctored and Misleading FFXIII Screenshots: Shame on Them
So Kotaku just posted a batch of new screenshots on FFXIII from Square Enix late Friday night. The reason for the set of new screenshots is to show the differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game. As Kotaku pointed out, the comparison shots are exactly the same aside from the UI changes to match the given console.
Take a look at the banner image. I actually made that image with two separate screenshots. I purposely didn’t put a line through where turns from PS3 to 360 to make a point. Without being told, a person would have no way to tell which version the screenshot comes from or where the crossover from one screenshot to the next is.
Xbox 360:
Playstation 3:
The obvious difference in these two screenshots is the “LB” icon in the Xbox 360 screenshot and the “L1″ icon in the PS3 screenshot. Outside of this you will not find a single difference in the two images. I challenge you to open the images up in separate tabs or windows and switch back and forth, you won’t find anything different between them. I have posted only one example here, if you wish to compare all the screenshots you can head over to Kotaku.
Clearly Square Enix is not being honest with these recent screenshot releases. This is completely unacceptable and they should not be allowed to use these tactics without major repercussions. I can understand that a lot of video game sites tend to stick to straight reporting of news rather than enter the opinion side of things but something needs to be done about this.
I realize that we are just a small site here at Golgotron but I hope people who work throughout the industry can realize how wrong Square Enix is to do something like this. I think this calls for sites like IGN, Kotaku, Joystiq, and others to take a negative stance against Square Enix and specifically point out how wrong they are and that we, as a collective of gamers, will not allow such behavior within this industry.
I encourage anybody who is reading this to spread the word and make people aware of Square Enix’s dishonest business practices. I will be sending Square Enix an email at na.pr@square-enix.com to express my dissatisfaction with this incident and I encourage others to do the same.
