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Ah, Square-Enix, the Disney of the video game world.

We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems.

Maybe the statement about the Japanese market and the need for physical media is true, but we'd need to compare sales of VC games in Japan versus the rest of the world to find out. However, there is a whole world outside of Japan, one that has shown itself more than satisfied with the download model, and one that has yet to see two Dragon Quest games in any form.

As for the "billing issues," I'm assuming he's suggesting that most children don't have credit cards with which to buy these games. Well, how are these kids buying Square-Enix downloads for their mobile phones, then? And why can't they buy their games the same way I do: using cash to buy points cards?

It's safe to say that this statement is little more than a hand-wave to distract people from the real reason Square-Enix doesn't want to sell its bread and butter on the virtual Console: they're still charging a premium for remakes for other systems. After all, Final Fantasy for the PSP comes out next month.

And, ultimately, I foresee Square-Enix's greed here to be their downfall.

Let's consider Final Fantasy for a moment. The original game was released for the Famicom, and Nintendo did the grunt work of translating and publishing the game for the NES in other markets. As far as the Virtual Console is concerned, little else needs to be done with it other than upload it to the servers.

However, in recent years, Square-Enix has been publishing a number of remakes of the original game, where they updated the graphics and sound, tweaked the combat system to make it easier, and added some pre-rendered cutscenes in some versions. The first remake was for the WonderSwan Color, which included the game as a pack-in. The first taste of the remake that non-Japanese gamers had came with the PlayStation release of Final Fantasy Origins, in which the game was bundled with Final Fantasy II on the same disk. A similar scheme of combining the two games was used when they were released for the Game Boy Advance.

For gamers outside of Japan, Final Fantasy Origins for the PlayStation was worth the purchase as it came with a game that had never been released outside of Japan, Final Fantasy II. For me, at least, the Final Fantasy I remake was pretty and worth a quick playthrough, but I more enjoyed playing the first Final Fantasy game that involved character development.

And while I'd already played both games on the PlayStation, Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls for the Game Boy Advance promised me additional story arcs in Final Fantasy II. New dungeons in Final Fantasy I were, again, something worth playing through just to look at, but (at least in my opinion) certainly not enough to justify purchasing the game alone.

Now we have Square-Enix on the verge of releasing Final Fantasy I for the PSP. For those of us outside of Japan, this will be the first Final Fantasy remake in which I wasn't bundled with II. What will we be getting if we put down some money on yet another Final Fantasy remake?

• Some cutscenes, most (if not all) of which we've already seen on the PlayStation.
• Some extra art sketches, which probably wouldn't be enough to justify publishing a $10-$15 book of artwork for.
• A new dungeon, something that romhackers have been adding to Final Fantasy since before the WonderSwan Color.

All this on a UMD that will at least cost as much (probably more) as the Game Boy Advance cartridge that included a whole second game.

Sure, the game will likely sell reasonably well in Japan, but I for one won't be buying it, not for $30, and not for $15 after it inevitably hits the bargain bin, and I have a hard time seeing anybody outside Japan but the most rabid fanboy shelling out money for this particular remake.

The game will sit on the store shelf for a few months, but shelf space dedicated to the PSP is limited and it's surprising how quickly games disappear from those shelves (already it can be difficult to find Valkyrie Profile). As a guess, I'd say Square-Enix has about six months to actually make money off this game, before it starts to cost stores to stock this game rather than pay, and there are too many used copies in stores and on eBay for new copies to compete against.

A Virtual Console release of the original game, in its original form, certainly wouldn't look as lucrative, with its $5 price tag instead of $30+ for a PSP game. But unlike a PSP game, a VC game doesn't have to compete for shelf space: once it's for sale, it will always be available for purchase, allowing impulse buyers to buy on their own schedules rather than hoping that a customer's impulse will happen while the game is still on shelves (remember Valkyrie Profile).

On top of that, for $5, Square-Enix wouldn't have to try so hard to add content in the hopes of justifying the purchase price to buyers. Sure, often the additional content is enough to justify buying the game again in the mind of enthusiasts, but this isn't always the case, and this PSP remake itself seems to be destined to be one of the failures. And when you add up the costs of stamping the UMDs, printing the inserts, buying the advertising and actually shipping the game (on top of paying the programmers and artists), such remakes certainly have the potential to lose the company money as well as earn it. Not only are these costs all but non-existant for Virtual Console games, but Final Fantasy (at least) doesn't need any additional input from programmers, artists or translators. The only cost is bandwidth.

It's doubtful that anybody will be able to talk sense into Square-Enix at the moment, they likely don't yet see these remakes as a gamble compared to the sure thing of VC downloads. About the only way this is going to happen is if Square-Enix starts to lose money on these remakes while some competitor makes money on downloadable games. The ignonimity of watching downloads of Ys for the MSX (a system already on the VC in Japan) or Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System (if you can emulate a Genesis, you're more than half-way there) continue to give Falcom or Sega a steady revenue stream long after Square-Enix has ceased to make a dime off of new UMD sales of Final Fantasy should be shocking enough to get their attention.

Until then, why would I buy the PSP version of Final Fantasy when I could buy two Wii points cards instead?