Yes, you read it right. Announced today at the Square-Enix conference, FFXIII will be released simultaneously on the PS3 and 360 in North America. I’m sure Howard Brown will be along with the official press release soon enough, but I had to jump on this news while it’s still fresh. Even when it means posting from my girlfriend’s laptop with a busted touchpad and wonky space bar that makes me type like the Sheep Man from Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance (”FinalFantasyXIIIgoesmultiplatformandtheworldrejoices,yeah??”), going back over every sentence adding spaces after the fact. Hey, this is big news, it’s worth a bit of frustration.

Anyway, little known fact about Dylan Garret — I used to write for a very large and important video game website back in the day before it turned into a crappy shill for the industry that started changing all their “I”s to “We”s in articles, and still mod over on their message boards. And let me tell you, those message boards are blowing up right now. Sony fanboys feel betrayed, 360 fanboys are rejoicing, and the rest of us folks with calm, cool heads are watching the riot with smirks on our faces, occasionally taking the time to post that GIF of Michael Jackson eating popcorn from the Thriller video.

Personally, I’m all for whatever gets a game into the most hands possible. I get why Sony fanboys might feel betrayed — a lot of big reasons to own a PS3 have jumped over to 360 already, and today, probably the biggest reason to shell out the big money for Sony’s box has also jumped ship. But hell, if you already own a PS3, nothing’s changed. If you don’t, now you too get to experience Final Fantasy XIII. It’s win-win, guys. Let’s not be spiteful here.

Truthfully, I haven’t been all that psyched about FFXIII — looks too much like a desperate return to the zippers-and-pleather era of Final Fantasy, still trying to ride the success of FFVII over a decade later. I actually thought FFXII was the best new Final Fantasy to come out in a long time. I dug that the main character wasn’t some moody bastard whining about how he has to save the world despite his own chronic depression, that it was just some kid who kind of had nothing to do with the epic events going on around him, almost like an objective, sort of naive outsider view on the whole twisted world of war and international politics. The combat and dungeons could have used a lot more love (breaking down why would be a whole ‘nother article altogether), but I really dug the direction they were going with it. Now it’s back to spiky hair, latex, and motorcycles named Shiva, and I’m just not feeling that as much anymore, personally. I want Final Fantasy, not The Matrix.

That said, of course I’m still gonna buy the thing the day it comes out. Hell yeah. It’s a good day to be a gamer.

UPDATE: Looks like Howard Brown totally did beat me to the punch on this bit of news, but without my colorful commentary, so I guess I’ll leave this up as well. After all, it’s news so big, it deserves two posts.