Of course they could change tradition... but going by it, the true main problem with this game is that Final Fantasies are usually (almost always) released in the end of the year.
And since Lighting Returns is scheduled for the end of next year... I don't think they will put 2 PS3 FFs against each other. So that leaves end of 2014 (!!??) for this game in japan and Spring 2015 (????!!!!) for the localized version.
Well, I don't think they could be THIS much crazy.