I was asked to weigh in on this: the fact that Final Fantasy XIII has been announced as a multiplatform game for North American and European territories. Translation: the long-awaited game will not be a PlayStation 3 exclusive anymore, and it’s coming to the Xbox 360 (except in Asia). As you may have guessed, the message boards and other fanboy gathering points absolutely exploded, with a majority of the posts being a virtual burning at the stake of Sony fans. You know, the usual “PS3 is d00med!!!1!!1!!”, “the game will run better on 360,” and other such nonsense.

There’s two big pieces of this announcement that people seem to have forgotten. First off, the game is still coming to the PS3. I understand that less copies will be sold for the PS3 in North America and in Europe now that it’s multiplatform, but can you fault Square Enix for wanting to recoup their investment in any way possible? As we all know, game development is ridiculously expensive nowadays. Porting FFXIII to other systems simply makes good financial sense. PS3 owners will still get to play it, so who cares where else it goes?

Secondly…an overwhelming majority of Xbox 360 fans did not care about FFXIII (or most Final Fantasy games, for that matter) until the moment the Xbox 360 port was announced. Don’t believe me? Check out message boards ever since the PS3 was released; FFXIII was lambasted over and over again by the 360 crowd; the complaints about the very Japanese style of the game ran rampant, and were actually used as yet another weapon with which to attack Sony fans. (Figure that one the fuck out.) When the 360 started to get a few JRPGs of its own, the fans exalted every single one of them as being “better than Final Fantasy XIII.” (Yes, even shitballs like Enchanted Arms.) We still know next to nothing about the game, yet other games are automatically better? Please.

Why the sudden change of heart? Because like so many things before, it’s just another preposterous reason to attack Sony properties. Sadly, it’s a mentality that’s deeply ingrained into the US gaming fandom and press, and it’s a shame that FFXIII has been relegated to the status of a blunt object. It should also be noted that the Xbox 360 version will indeed be a port; Square Enix themselves have stated that the PS3 version will be finished first (for the Japanese release), and then they’ll work on porting it to the 360 alongside the English translation of the PS3 version. As such, some concessions will have to be made, the most obvious one being multiple discs for the 360 port. Not a huge deal, perhaps, but it isn’t something that should be casually swept under the rug.

Regardless, this all boils down to a very singular truth: at the end of the day, more people will get to experience what looks to be a highly entertaining game. That’s not a bad thing, no matter how you try to spin it.