The burgeoning success of Live has clearly proved too alluring for SquareEnix to resist any longer, the Japanese developer announcing today that MMORPG XI is heading to the Xbox 360. FFXI has so far proved a smash on both the and PC, across North America and Asia in particular. No dating is certain for the 360 launch yet, but this marks a major breakthrough for Microsoft. The current generation Xbox has faired somewhat worse than its rivals in Asia, so agreements like this should boost the system's credibility immeasurably.

In highly relevant news, has also let slip that many Xbox original titles will also be compatible with the new Xbox 360, a major boost for the system as we already know how consumer hate short product life cycles, and perhaps crucial given that the is backwards compatible with PS2 (but not PS1) titles. Specific titles will be compatible, but some may not we're told, and we're awaiting specific details at this juncture.

"Xbox has become a major force in video-game innovation, and we couldn't be more captivated by the canvas," said Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix. "As the world's first cross-platform game with more than 500,000 users, Final Fantasy XI will take advantage of the incredible power of the Xbox 360 platform, immersing gamers in spellbinding stories that come to life in high definition and through collaborative online gameplay."

How exciting. More soon.

By Luke Guttridge