Might as well post this here, there are too many X threads and this is one of the most recent ones.

About a half-dozen characters have been 'officially' reavealed so far, but despite the apparent implication that they are probably all party members, technically only Cross (the player-created character), Elma, and Lynlee have been confirmed to be party members. Every time gameplay has been shown, that's the party, just those three. I've always assumed that these are the first three party members and we've been seeing very early-game footage this whole time, like how Xenoblade promotion focused heavily on Shulk/Reyn/Sharla on the Bionis Leg.

But there was one instance in which this was not the case. In the Nintendo Direct last February, Iwata presented some gameplay footage of X in which the player and three party members take on a couple of enemies -- first on foot, and then in mechs. It looked like it was just showing off the battle system at the time, and was presented more or less without comment.

But wait, who the hell is this party?

It may be blurry, but even so you can plainly see that none of these four characters are Elma or Lynlee -- or Tatsu, Van Damme, or Irina, for that matter. Actually, we've never seen any characters who even vaguely resembled these four in any footage aside from this short gameplay clip. What's more, in Xenoblade your party members gained experience and leveled up together, even when not in use. Yet here we see a gap of 19 levels between the top and bottom party members.

That seals it, I'm 100% sure online co-op is in the game and these four characters are all Cross.

Where did you get this Nintendo bought Namco myth from  ,link please.

I checked and can't find anything except Namco selling 80% of Monolith and then later the remaining 16% they owned.

Sigh. Nintendo doesn't own namco, but the transaction of nintendo buying it was made back in 2008. The problem is that the pathetic japanese government didn't allow it, so it was cancelled and nintendo bought monolith instead.

I'm 99% sure this is just beta footage to show the battle system and does not represent the multiplayer.

But the actual characters were already in the game. This was just a few months before the E3 2014 blowout that had the first hour of the game more or less completely finished. You can already see Elma (or someone who looks a lot like her) in the January 2013 footage, shown over a year before this gameplay demo.