Square Enix has confirmed to VG247 this afternoon that Final Fantasy XIII will appear at E3 this year.

“There’s going to be more things happening for XIII at E3,” said a rep. “That’s all I can say at the moment. And throughout the year there’s more things planned as well, which should shed more light on the release timings.”

The news comes after a story saying FF Versus XIII had been put on hold to assist in the development of FFXIII was proven to be incorrect.

Confirmation the game will show colours at the show will come as great relief both to fans and Sony alike. Big trailer megaton for the press conference, please.

More soon.

http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/06/19/final-fantasy-xiii-confirmed-for-e3-dating-hint-possible/

"...which should shed more light on the release timings."

That certainly makes the '08 release for Japan rumor more plausible, imo.  If it's not going to hit until '09 sometime, you'd think they'd stay silent on the release date for the time being.

please be 08.
Anyway i thought SE said that from now one they are going to do WW releases

A big surprise would be they've dalyed DQ IX to the next fiscal year because they want to release all the remakes first and FF XII is being released this fiscal year in Japan!

Not going to happen though :(

Please say we at least get a new some trailer and some info about the gameplay

Please SE show us some ingame trailers, not the same trailer from 2006 plus 2-3 additional seconds!!!! and while i'm in an asking mood, can u please confirm KH3 for ps3 and make soriko mad :) , just kiddinggggggggg sorikooooooooo :)

Bolded: So they are going to be showing more things throughout the year. I have a feeling FFXIII will release this year in Japan at least.

Hopefully a lot of gameplay footage is shown.

At least three things spring to my mind.
1) As I suggested in another thread, not citing explicitly FF, but generally big games that could follow MGS4, if MSG4 is doing so well with the current HW base and in an almost dead season, SE could quite confidently deduce that during Christmas season, with a bigger HW base and its Xmas surge to take into account too, FF XIII could do very well.
2) If SE manages to release a stable product in a shorter than predicted time, Sony could give them some extra reward.
3) Releasing earlier, with less big titles to compete, could further boost FF sales: obviously SE must carefully calculate if this boost compensates the smaller HW base compared to a later release, but they'll consider also that FF, like most classics, will keep on selling to new PS3 buyers, for the best titles future HW base is not lost release firs, while a Christmas release could cash also on more casual buyers, while in other periods the game should count more on fans of the series, that wouldn't miss it whenever it's released, anyway.

 You mis-quoted dude

"throughout the year there’s more things planned as well, which should shed more light on the release timings.”

This can only mean TGS'08