Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has joined Microsoft's Xbox team and in a new development deal, will produce RPGs for the console. The FF series has sold one copy for every person in the UK population (60 million). Clearly Microsoft are quite happy with their latest signing, treating it like the signing of a new world-class soccer player to Chelsea or Real Madrid.

Keeping each other's options open, there will only be two RPGs in the initial deal and there's no clear announcement on whether either or both titles will stay only Xbox only, migrate to other platforms either at launch or after a delay or, as a third option, might form part of Xbox 2's launch roster instead.

"Sakaguchi started developing story lines and characters for Microsoft's new games several months ago, Moore said. He declined to say when the games will be released. The Redmond giant has no release date for the new Xbox although Some analysts have said they expect it between Halloween and Xmas 2005 as earlier speculation recently stated.

Microsoft said in January that its Xbox division turned a profit for the first time, spurred by the November release of the video game ``Halo 2.'' The division, on which Microsoft spent $12 billion between 2000 and 2004, earned $84 million compared with a loss of $397 million a year earlier."

Either way, fans will certainly be watching and waiting for Sakaguchi-san's work for Microsoft, however the games play out.

Quote Source: Bloomberg.com

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