"Square Enix president Yoichi Wada fielded questions at a financial briefing today, and obviously Dragon Quest IX's delay was the big topic of conversation. But Final Fantasy XIII was also brought up, according to this report at ITMedia.

It appears that DQIX's delay could affect FFXIII's release. Regarding the release of the PS3 title, Wada said, "It may be affected by Dragon Quest IX's delay. We'd like to work towards (a release) within fiscal 2009."

He added, ""We've yet to finalize our plans for the next term, so I cannot say for sure if there will or will not be an effect, but Dragon Quest's release being March or July changes the premise. I can't say that there won't be an influence."

http://www.andriasang.com/e/blogs/anoop/2009/02/12/dqix_delay_could_affect_ffxiii/

Final Fantasy XIII for Christmas 2010 in Japan and a 2011 American and Europe release, if it doesn't go to the next generetion' consoles.

And it most likely will. I think we will see its Japanese release in April/May 2010 and in NA/EU during the holidays.

Man, that's a very serious bummer.

Hopefully this won't slow down the localization process for the West. If everything comes out okay, maybe players in the West can get it at the same time we would have anyway?

One of the things that these delays make me think is that there will be no KH3 this generartion. It will probably be next generation.

Will be really interesting to see what happens with FFXIII, we could even end up with a WW release! Not joking here, SE will want DQ to get the limelight for at least 6 months and in that time localization could be completed.

Financially it would be better, because that is too much revenue to lump into a single fiscal year. They would get killed in taxes not to mention the next year would report a huge dropoff in earnings.