Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and yes, even Kingdom Hearts. Square Enix stands on the pillars of its great franchises, those three among them. If you love those three, then this might come as good news to you - Yoichi Wada wants to add two to three more franchises to that list.

Another major gaming event coming up - the Tokyo Game Show is prepping to get its game on this year. Publishers are starting to whip out their lineups for the said event, and today's lineup comes from Square Enix. To No surprise at all, they'll be taking a very FF-clad lineup to TGS 2009.

With the success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC and the kind of anticipation we're seeing for Modern Warfare 2, it looks like Activision wants to use the profitable name as they bring the glorious FPS into the Nintendo yard. How will Modern Warfare fare in the Wii and DS? Time will tell. It'll be an interesting subject once more things unfold, so read up and stay up to speed with the goings-on in the industry.

Surprisingly, we've got quite some bare pickings from the industry this week. Guess what comes down must go up. If last week we've had software/hardware dilemmas in terms of quantity, this week, we've got them updates by the truckloads, and the Industry News section takes the backseat.

As GamesCom slowly approaches, we've got more publishers announcing their lineup for the said event. For today, it's Square Enix and their newly-acquired Eidos, and the two will be sharing one booth to showcase their joint lineup. Hold your horses though, there aren't any crossovers from the two publishers just yet.

The newly formed Square Enix Europe has announced the games they'll be bringing to this year's GamesCom event. The list consists of games from both Square Enix and Europe and includes such titles as Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, Xbox 360, PC). Four different Final Fantasies are also part of the showcase.

Media Create has released the results of Japan's software charts for the week of July 6th to July 12th. Dragon Quest IX for the DS beats everyone else to the top of the game with a smashing 2, 319,000 copies sold. Wii Sports Resort, which comes in at second place, does not even come an eeny-teeny, bitty close with only 103,000.

With the announcement of their E3 lineup this year, Square Enix moves into the expo aiming to show a broader variety of games than the ones we usually see. Taking their partnerships with other developers, the A-list publisher will showcase different game genres in their booth, apart from their arsenal of heavyweight franchises of course.

Last year, Square Enix dropped a lot of jaws when it was announced that Final Fantasy XIII would also be coming to the Xbox 360. This year they're planning to make another big splash.

Swine flu strikes again. The threat posed by the H1N1 virus has resulted in Square Enix and Koei cutting the number of their staff attending this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo. Details in the full article.