L.A., California. 10/11/06 - October 11, 2006 was now Final Fantasy XII Day.

You've probably heard the news by now and if you haven't then now you have.
NYC and Company which is New York City's official tourism and marketing organization declared October 11, 2006 Final Fantasy XII day.
Why October 11,2006? This was the day that a press conference for the release of the much anticipated Final Fantasy XII was held at the Times Square Information Center.

As part of the festivities there was a Final Fantasy XII cos play competition. Entrants and winners were showcased at the event.

Trailers for the new PlayStation 2 game were played while the cos play contest winners stood on stage.

Although FFXII was a huge success early on both KH2 and FFXII failed to meet sales projections. This has prompted Square Enix to cut their earnings forecast by 40% for 2006 down to $85.3 million dollars.
Although this isnt brand new news I had to write about it simply because I am puzzled at the time line of their game releases.
Although FFXII is going to release in North America probably before Christmas of 2006 their failure to release games early in the year meant lower earnings and although the FFXII sales were not up to their expectations they certainly were not dismal.
So it appears they were looking for sales of KH2 and FFXII to be spectacular and were forecasting earnings based on these heightened expectations.

Yep, looks great! Sorry to say I havent had the opportunity to play it yet but the word from my friends in Japan combined with the ffxii screenshots and videos are making me grin from ear to ear.

One of my friends just returned from Japan last week. He could only get a few hours of FFXII gameplay in while he was there and this was his insightful comment to me, "it was different than any other Final Fantasy game in many ways like the battle system but at the same time it had a familiar feeling".
Yeah, thanks Chris for that umm insightfully boring review pal.