In interviews with Japanese publications, producers Yoshinori Kitase and Hiromichi Tanaka confirmed that their respective production teams were working on a new Final Fantasy game for PlayStation 3 and a new MMORPG respectively.

Confirming rumors which have circulated in Japan for months, Kitase, the head of Square Enix's first production team, stated he was working on a new Final Fantasy installment for Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 3. While the director of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII and VIII and producer of Final Fantasy X, X-2, the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and the Kingdom Hearts series declined to clarify whether his new project was Final Fantasy XIII, he mentioned the Final Fantasy VII technical demo shown at E3 had been supervised by himself and created by Motomu Toriyama's team. For reference, Toriyama has recently been serving as Final Fantasy X's event director and Final Fantasy X-2's main director.

Regarding the technical demo, Kitase confirmed that it had been put together within a matter of six weeks. While he initially wasn't optimistic about the possibility of creating the demo in such a short period of time, the team succeeded after calling upon Kouji Sugimoto (Threads of Fate director, Final Fantasy X character main programmer, Final Fantasy X-2 real-time programmer, Hanjuku Eiyuu Tai 3D main programmer). Kitase acknowledged that with more time, they would have been able to produce a higher quality demo making use of the PlayStation 3's specs.

As far as further additions to the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII are concerned, the producer would only say that possibility exists.

Kitase's colleague and head of the company's third production team Hiromichi Tanaka meanwhile confirmed that his team was working on a new MMORPG. Tanaka, who currently serves as producer of Final Fantasy XI explained that the Xbox 360 technical demo was in fact a product of various experiments his team had been conducting to see what visual quality could be achieved using next generation hardware. In an interview last month, it was revealed that the third production team had been working on a third Final Fantasy XI expansion pack ever since development commenced on the second expansion, Chains of Promathia.

• GameSpot