Square Enix is making the last adjustments to the European and US versions of Final Fantasy XIII according to the company's president Yoichi Wada

The news comes ahead of a promised announcement this Friday regarding the western release of the highly anticipated Japanese blockbuster. It is widely believed that a western release date will be announced, if not on Friday, then very soon.

“We’ve completed the master of the Japanese version, and for the US and European versions we’re just adding the final touches,” Wada told GamesIndustry.biz. “The last stage of development has gone very smoothly this time.” However the length of the production seems to have been a drain on the development team and Square Enix as a company. “It took us a tremendous amount of time to develop the software for this generation, so that’s a lesson for the creators,” Wada added.

The Square Enix president also threw in his penny’s worth about the length of this generation saying that a long cycle was the next best thing to having only one console to develop for. “The ideal situation for developers would be to have a single platform worldwide – but that’s impossible, so with multi-platform, if you can expand your user base, I think we have to accept that reality,” he explained. “For the current generation, the ideal for us would be a long platform cycle and the prices to come down gradually, so that we can expand that user base.”

We’ll keep you updated on the Final Fantasy XIII announcement later in the week.

[via GamesIndustry.biz]