Square Enix Apologise For Copy / Paste Screenshot Fiasco

Images released by Square Enix several days ago reportedly showed like for like gameplay screens from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of upcoming, role-playing super hit Final Fantasy XIII. While Kotaku at first jested that “every shot looks identical, save for the display of the buttons on the role-playing game’s interface”, later probing found the superlatory allegation to be quite true. Each pair of images really were duplicates, with interface crudely pasted over the top.

An official Valentine’s Day statement was released by Square Enix:

Unfortunately we did mistakenly include screenshots taken for pre-production (non-promotional use only) in our latest release of assets. Screenshots from the final game intended for the press kit will be released shortly. As shown in our recent demo tour and Microsoft’s X10 event, there is no material difference between the two consoles.

As is always found in cross platform development (and evidenced extensively by Digital Foundry‘s excellent Face Off series), the idea of true platform parity is largely a myth. Whether Square Enix’s mistake aimed to deliberately mislead is of course impossible to say, but it seems cynically convenient that images released with comparison as their specific aim would turn out to be copy / paste bullshots.

“We don’t feel there is a need to enhance the X360 [version]” tweeted Sonia Im, Square Enix’s North American spokeswoman. “We are looking into how the #FFXIII altered screens ended up in our presskit …  this was obviously not intentional.”

Via: Kotaku