Japan Expo — the biggest Japanese pop culture conference in Europe for the past 15 years — will be held next week in Paris, France from 2 – 6 July 2014. It will be a fully stacked 5 day extravaganza to celebrate all things Japanese entertainment and culture, and to celebrate the 15 year anniversary of the expo itself.
One of the highlight guests at the event will be none other than the father of Final Fantasy himself, Hironobu Sakaguchi, who will be representing his studio Mistwalker. He will be giving a talk on his career and offer his insights on the industry and video game design in general, but more importantly will be unveiling Mistwalker’s latest project for the first time ever.
Taken from the latest update on the official Japan Expo website:
“Hironobu Sakaguchi is the Executive Producer of the world-famous interactive game software Final Fantasy series. He’s been awarded several times and in 2004 created his own development studio, Mistwalker, in which he produced many RPG such as Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey or The Last Story.
On Wednesday, Hironobu SAKAGUCHI is sharing the various experiences of his career and his vision of the future of video games during a conference. He will also present his latest project, which is kept secret for the time being… A signing session and a photo shoot are also planner, to get a unique souvenir with Final Fantasy creator.”
You can check out the official Japan Expo website for all details and information on the event and Sakaguchi’s appearance.
I fear this might be some kind of Xbox One game, however, I wouldn’t rule out something with Nintendo. Sakaguchi and Nintendo have been extremely tight, and from my understanding, Sakaguchi was quite happy with the Big N partnership for The Last Story; so there’s a bit of hope there for the latter. That being said, Mistwalker has openly talked about their collaboration with Microsoft as it relates to Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey — and from all reports, it seems like Microsoft treated them fairly well. This really could go either way; I’d prefer the latter, though I can be content if the former ultimately is true.
there’s little reason for Microsoft to not show this game earlier as it would significantly diversify the line up further especially since e3 could have used an exclusive jrpg push on sony. Especially since scalebound, another Japanese game was revealed at the conference so it would not have felt out of place.
As long as it’s not some mobile game or worse…a browser-based game… which I have a bad feeling it is 🙁
cool…