I'm sure by now you've all heard the news.

Overall it's definitely a surprise, but if there's one thing Square-Enix sure is good at these days, it's making sound money judgments (even if it results in remake after remake after bloody remake).  I do have a few thoughts, however.

In the realm of mature gamers (most of whom have the disposable income to purchase all or as many of the current generation of consoles as they like), fanboy platform wars have no real place. That being said, I see both major positives and negatives about this announcement.

On the plus side, any increase in the competition of two massive corporate juggernauts can only be good for consumers, and the game being multiplatform will help it reach a wider audience and boost sales (especially overseas). In this day and age, it seems like third party exclusive titles are becoming a thing of the past, being replaced by highly subsidized exclusive bonus content (which results in more money for the developers who MAKE the games we love).

However, one advantage consoles have always had is the uniformity of hardware, allowing developers to milk as much performance as possible out of the system, and resulting in better looking titles than on comparably equipped PC hardware (but PCs, being upgradable, often quickly strip that advantage away as hardware progresses). Today, multiplatform developers for Xbox 360 and PS3 often strive for graphical parity between the versions (e.g., GTA4, Assassin's Creed). And while I have no doubt both are powerful systems in their own respects, they are also radically different hardware architectures and I can't see how developers can realistically claim to be maxing out the performance on both systems, yet still have them come out looking virtually indistinguishable.

As an owner of both systems, I was looking forward to FF XIII as an incredible showcase of just how powerful the PS3 was as a system. I'm sure it will still be a fantastic game, but I wonder if this decision won't negatively impact the final product...

The Wii also has a place in this.

While it usually represents a younger gaming community, the hardware is simply not as good. Take Splinter Cell: Double agent for example. The graphics (and controls for that matter) are terrible on the wii, whereas on the PC espesially, it looks great.

I've noticed that many titles that would have once been published to every console (like in the old days of gamecube xbox and ps2) are now being excluded from the Wii, and there are more games that can only be played on the Wii.

In my opinion, this game will look better and play better on the PS3, due to the fact that this is the console it was originally intended for. I think that the port for 360 will not have some of the polish in the PS3 version.

But the question is, does this make gamers want to spend the extra money on a PS3 system? Having not bought one myself, I would still say no.

Yeah, this will be kind of a blow to Sony, considering they seem to be lacking PS3 exclusive titles that lure people to buy their console.  LUCKILY, I have a PS3 that I won from a raffle, so I might just stick with the native PS3 version when the game comes out.

Do you actually *do* anything around here? Lawd.

I don't know how much I'm going to miss Sony if they fall out of the controller-console-tv gaming world ( i've mentioned before I'll happily buy a PSP once I have money ). Of all the current consoles, the PS3 has the least gas in its tank. To begin with, they started out as an appliance brand. They made televisions, tape players and later, cd players. These were their main draws. They hit big money with the PS2. But then as strong titles became less and less common, the market for Sony's gaming technology grew smaller and smaller. The PSP is bigger than the PS3 now. They were late to the game, and now they're losing the war. Big time.

Lucky you.  I'm almost feeling sorry for the PS3 having no good games and being just an MGS4 console.

Exclusive PS3 games, none of those PS1 and PS2 games if you're European like me and can't get one with backwards compatibility.