FFXIII Playable On Japanese Smartphones
Yes, you read those roman numerals right, “13.” It wasn’t that long ago you needed high-end equipment to run such a graphics-heavy game. How does it work? The cloud, that’s how. A remote server does the heavy computing work and beams the results to any iOS or Android smartphone in Japan that holds the proper app.
Above is a screenshot of the phone version of the game. It wasn’t difficult to convert the menu options to touch mode.
Naturally, if there was any game in the Final Fantasy series that would mold well to the smartphone gamer, it would be number 13, seeing as a lot of phone games involve simply running along a track, and the majority of FFXIII’s content is….yeah.
You can try this version of the game out elsewhere, like in America, if you have a Japanese iTunes account. But it might be slow going, as the server data would be far more remote. The game can be downloaded for free for the first thirty minutes, but after the time expires, it costs 2,000 yen to unlock (about $17 in US dollars).