Well, probably my last post of this year, I’m taking a few days of vacation and I’m going back to France to spend Xmas with my family for the first time in years...
So, happy times I hope, with a nephew I will carry in my arms for the first time (that’s the bad part of being on the other side of the planet, but “hey”, thx to Internet and webcam, things are easier than before anyway, right? :).

So, 2008 is coming to an end, wow… it was fast!
We finished God of war and started new exiting unannounced "secret" projects.
Can't wait for you guys to know more, time will come...
Recently, Rad even said that we might look at a potential PSP return in the future and it seems people were pretty thrilled about this possibility!
Don't know if it will happens but it's great to see how fans are expecting a lot from us, and it's very exiting to work for a company where you have to give your best because people are expecting the best from you.
And even if I'm not speaking a lot about it, I'm still following what's going in the PSP world, rumors, perdictions and other surprises I'm sure are there next year for Psp Owners!

This week, I wanted to speak about the huge announcement of last week of next Dragon Quest being developed for the Nintendo Wii.
The choice made two years ago of developing DQ 9 for the Ds was a huge surprise and totally logical from a company point of view knowing what product they were dealing with for what public.
And even if the announce of the port of the DQ 4,5 and 6 on Ds made me wonder if it would then push the 9 from Ds to Wii or even to Ds + Wii (that the Next one I’m sure will do somehow), I was pretty "sure" the next DQ would be on the Wii.
This announcement is definitely sending a strong message to Japanese dev. aiming for Japan market that the console to develop for in the two years to come will be the Wii.
Regrouping Dragon Hunter and Dragon Quest is definitely owning the two strongest IP to succeed in Japan.
As a side note, I even wonder if Level 5 will be approached by Square to port DQ 8 from the Ps2 to the Wii if the work and money to do this is not to big..
The reason I wanted to get back to this news is because it striked me on how logical and clever it is, and on how Square Enix knows what is good and what they want for the Dragon Quest brand to succeed and be successful.
I am not a DQ fan and don’t care as a player if it ends-up on this console or not, if it’s excusive or multi platform, but I see how on a commercial standpoint, their product should or will found his massive specific public on what console in two to four years.
I was really expecting the next DQ to be on DS(i), Psp, or Wii… Any of those three console would have been a good decision when Ps3 would be a risk, First in terms of install based, second, in terms of public, so overall, in terms of profit.
Every decision made in this business are made based on money, like elsewhere, even if we hide it from outsiders or fans, so they can look at the video game world in terms of a fantasy imaginary Tv soap story.... And Square here proves (like they did this summer with the announcement of porting the next FF to 360, or like Konami will port Mgs4 to 360) is a pretty secured player on what is bringing the money (so the future of millions of player and employee), like EA is (followed by the fast learner Ubi and Activision) on the western side.

To finish, this year, I would like to give you a link. I’m not reading enough Gamasutra, and I should, so I’ve missed those two articles, check them out if you missed them too: Inside Game Piracy, Crushing Discs, Pushing Education and The Countermeasures .

And check out what we receive at the office for next year: an awesome Arcade machine to play during l(cr)unch times :)... Awesome!!!

I guess, my next post next year will be about all those game of 2008 I have or haven’t played, and about what I'm waiting for... yeaaaah.

Happy (even short) Holidays and End of the year 2008 to you all!