Why Was Star Ocean: The Last Hope On Xbox 360 First?

As of last week, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a multi-platform game. However, it took a year for the PlayStation 3 version to come out. How come?

“This was all about timing. When we began development, we were provided with the development equipment needed to produce titles for the Xbox 360 before that of the PS3,” the development team said in a fan powered Q&A. Microsoft and Tri-Ace started Infinite Undiscovery back in 2006. Originally, Microsoft Game Studios was the game’s publisher, but in 2007 they handed Infinite Undiscovery over to Square Enix. Star Ocean: The Last Hope was first announced in 2007 without a platform.

That answers one question, but why did Tri-Ace use CG models instead of anime portraits for the interface on the Xbox 360 version?

“When marketing to the North American audience, it was determined that the anime-esque characters and pop-culture imagery did not fit with the gameplay, and as such we changed the design we had prepared as the theme for these elements. Normally we would need to look into redesigning the characters in the game themselves as well, but this would cause too large of a gap between the release dates for Japan and North America, and so we decided not to modify any of the in-game characters.”