GamePro's Final Fantasy XIII launch party report

With a red carpet, a 3D trailer, appearances by Square Enix's top names and U.S. development legends alike, the Final Fantasy XIII launch party in San Francisco's Regency Center Grand Ballroom was truly a fantastic event. Here's a few items of note that came from the event.

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With a red carpet, a 3D trailer, appearances by Square Enix's top names and U.S. development legends alike, the Final Fantasy XIII launch party in San Francisco's Regency Center Grand Ballroom was truly a fantastic event. Here's a few items of note that came from the event.

• The event began with a 3D trailer for the game playing on the venue's large screen, which utilized Sony's 3D-enhancing stutter shades (recently-announced, via Gizmodo.) While most fans enjoyed watching the trailer in a new way, Square Enix decided to replay the entire trailer for a second time immediately afterwards, for some odd reason.
• A panel regarding the reach of Final Fantasy XIII included the likes of Chris Taylor from Gas Powered Games, Corrine Yu from Microsoft, Feargus Urquhart from Obsidian, and recent AIAS Hall of Fame inductee Mark Cerny. Helmed by G4's Chris Hardwick and also including FFXIII director Motomu Toriyama, the discussion centered around the long history of the Final Fantasy saga, and how it drives developers to create better games. Urqhart had a particularly moving anecdote about playing FFX when it came out with his then 5-year-old daughter, who slept on the couch next to him, randomly waking up during the night to give him advice like "use the blue dragon!"
• After that, three speakers came on stage to perform a toast. Entertainment Software Association President Mike Gallagher spoke about how much Final Fantasy means to the industry, and how it is such a force at E3 every year. Microsoft's Albert Pinello spoke about how proud he and his company were to have the Final Fantasy series come to the Xbox 360. The final speech was from Sony's Vice President of Public Relations, Rob Dyer, who spoke about the advantages of the PS3 version, imploring attendees to check out his PlayStation Blog post about the Blu-ray version's advantages.
• The night closed with a performance by DJ Mom Jeans--better known as "That 70's Show" star Danny Masterson.