During a media event last week, we snuck our way over to the Resonance of Fate demo, not to check out the game, but to clarify the launch date. See, most retailers said that the game would be out on March 9th, the same date as Square's Final Fantasy XIII. While RoF looks fantastic, there's absolutely no way it can compete with XIII, and we danced around such words when we asked about the official release. We were told that the March 9th date was speculative, and that the game would come out much closer to the end of the month.

Apparently, "much closer" means "one week."

Yes, one week. Sega has confirmed that the tri-Ace developed RPG will be launching in North America on March 16th on both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The week after XIII. Final Fantasy XIII. March 16th puts it on the same day as God of War III, which isn't any better than coming out against XIII. It's not even counter programming, it's a freaking JRPG with guns, which makes it nearly the same damn game as far as most people are concerned. I'm not going to rant about this being a dumb move, you all already know that. Instead, I say we all look at the bright side: as soon as you finish XIII, you can jump right into Resonance of Fate. You don't need to wait a few more weeks or anything, you can just dive into the fun. Right? Right? Well, if you don't play God of War III instead.

Ah, who am I kidding, worst release date ever. Hopefully it is good enough to get the RPG fanboys who hate Final Fantasy. There are a few of them left, I think.