Final Fantasy creator Sakaguchi goes mobile, free-to-play

As reported by Famitsu, and translated by NeoGAF, Hironobu Sakaguchi -- creator of the Final Fantasy franchise -- is the latest veteran developer to jump to free-to-play mobile games. His next RPG, called Terra Battle, will launch on Japanese smartphones in September. His most recent release for consoles, The Last Story, was a collaboration with Nintendo and Japanese development studio Marvelous. Sakaguchi will reveal more about the game tomorrow during a presentation at Paris' Japan Expo. Last year Japan became the world's number-one spender on mobile apps; thanks to that kind of success, Japanese publishers and developers are currently in the middle of a pivot toward mobile platforms, with some blaming their poor performance on an inability to capitalize on the market. His former employer, Square Enix, is also restructuring to capitalize on the smartphone market, The Japan Times reports.