By now everybody probably knows that the big news from the Square-Enix party is that they have finally set a release date for Final Fantasy XII. Drum roll please... March of freakin '06... for Japan. The means we should expect it more like June or July (at the earliest) here in the States. Do the math and you'll find that adds up to a four and a half year gap between Final Fantasy XII and the last, true, stand alone Final Fantasy (FFX). Now I'm sure that FFX-2 and FFXI are both great games. But I'm having enough trouble keeping up with one MMO as it is (not to mention the HDD doesn't work with my slimline), and I'm really just not that interested in a sequel to FFX, nor am I interested in a bunch of FFVII spinoffs in totally unrelated genres. The point here is Square is letting it's core franchise languish. For a decade and a half now Square has churned out some of the most beloved and memorable games ever. How come all of the sudden they decided that it just wasn't good enough. Another thing people have been talking about a lot lately is the possibility of a FFVII remake in the works for the PS3. Although the current speculation is based on pretty shaky grounds, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this happened at some point in the future. The problem is, given the current development time for a Final Fantasy game it will be 2011 before we finally see it, assuming that they've already begun work on it. Come on Square, I'm not asking for a lot here. While everyone out there is continually griping to all the other developers about how games aren't new and innovative enough, there are millions of people who would be more than happy to see you do exactly what you've been doing for the last 15 years. Hell a lot of people don't even want a new game, just prettied up versions of old ones. It's not a tall order.