The question that many gamers were asking after Microsoft's E3 press conference was "How did Final Fantasy XIII end up on the Xbox 360?" Way back in July, Microsoft Global Marketing Manager Albert Pennello explains:

I think the most obvious reason that they made the announcement is just looking at the success of our console...Square has done games for us in the past, and I think there's a point where Square just has to look at the Xbox 360, the install base and attach rates that we're seeing and actually has to make a decision on their own that it's the right thing to do for them...

I think it's easy to assume that something's going on behind the scenes, I think the more obvious answer is we're doing really well and the game creators want their games to be where the most people and the most consoles [are], and right now that's the Xbox 360.

For third party publishers, multi-platform makes sense. Still rather curious why it's not on the Xbox 360 in Japan, though...

Summit In The City [Mundorare via TalkXbox via Xboxer]

During this past weekend's Square Enix event, Final Fantasy XIII director and scenario writer Motomu Toriyama reassured the fans that the game's development hasn't changed. What's more, he continued:

We're making the PS3 version first, and then porting to the 360 later.... I'm telling [the development team] to not think about the Xbox 360 right now. We can think about it after the development kits arrive... Right now, we're fully concentrating on the PS3 version.

Well that's good. The bad news is that, as GameSpot notes, the PS3 version will mostly likely be held back for that simultaneous platform release in North America and Europe. Wonder if the same will be true for Japan, where the Xbox 360 hasn't been announced. Boy, multi-platform is tricky!

Square Enix: 360 FFXIII development hasn't begun [GameSpot via EDGE]