quote IGN

May 8, 2006 - At Square Enix's press conference at E3 in Los Angeles, the company officially announced Final Fantasy XIII for the PlayStation 3. Square Enix then proceeded to show a trailer from the game, in which a female protagonist is seen flying around a city. Video shown in the trailer was entirely realtime except for a short sequence of rendered footage showing a train -- our "Away Team" who saw the trailer said it looked "incredible", and will be reporting back further details after the SCE conference today at 4PM PST.

The game is being created by the same team behind Final Fantasy X. The game runs on the "White Engine", an all-new exclusive next-gen engine built for Square Enix's future games. It was originally planned for the PlayStation 2 but was later moved to the PS3. This game is part of the three-part saga, Fabula Nova Crystallis FF XIII, which also includes a cellphone prequel RPG and another PS3 title called FF Versus XIII, an action game by the makers of Kingdom Hearts.

quote IGN

Square Enix took everyone by surprise today at its pre E3 press conference with the announcement of not one, but three Final Fantasy XIII games. As part of the new Fabula Nova Crystallis compilation series, Square Enix will release three separate games set in the FFXIII universe, two for the PlayStation 3 and one for mobile systems.

While attendees of the press conference were given an early look at the games, story details were not revealed. However, Square Enix did brief the Japanese press on the staff members who are working away on this newest endeavor. Here's what the list of talent looks like.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
Yoshinori Kitase (Producer)
Motomu Toriyama (Director)
Tetsuya Nomura (Character Design)
Nobuo Uematsu (Theme Song Composition)
Masashi Hamazu (Composer)
Eiji Fujii (Movie Director)
Isamu Kamikokuryou (Art Director)

Final Fantasy Versus XIII (PS3)
Tetsuya Nomura (Director, Character Design)
Takeshi Nozue (Movie Director)
Yoko Shimomura (Composer)
Shinji Hashimoto (Producer)

Final Fantasy Agito XIII (Mobile)
Hajime Tabata (Director)
Tetsuya Nomura (Character Design)
Yusuke Naora (Art Director)
Takeharu Ishimoto (Composer)
Yukimasa Itou (Producer)

Based off these names, the FFXIII project seems to be in good hands. Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura should be recognizable to anyone who's been keeping up with the FF series. Motomu Toriyama served as director on FFX-2 and event director on FFX.

On the music side, Nobuo Uematsu is also a household name amongst FF fanatics. Masashi Hamazu most recently worked on composition for Dirge of Cerberus, and was also composer for games like Unlimited SaGa and FFX. Yoko Shimomura most recently worked on the soundtracks for games like Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, Kingdom Hearts II and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.

Now that the FFXIII project has been announced, we expect details to slowly begin streaming out of Japanese sources. The series is currently without a final release date on both sides of the Pacific.