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- Blue Dragon doesn't hit Japan for another couple of weeks, but there's already talk of a sequel. In the latest issue of Famitsu, producer Hironobu Sakaguchi confirmed plans for a follow up to the big Microsoft-published RPG. Furthermore, while he wouldn't confirm a final platform, Sakaguchi does expect the sequel to appear on the 360.

Sakaguchi's surprise announcement came as part of a lengthy interview to commemorate the end of production for Blue Dragon. That's right, the 360's first Japanese killer app is done, as one would hope given the game's 12/7 Japanese release date.

Including initial planning, development on the title took three years, Sakaguchi revealed. Actual development on the 360 was a two year process. And it was quite the difficult process, it seems, as Sakaguchi claims to have lost 10 kilograms from July 2004, when first interviews were conducted regarding the title.

Blue Dragon ships on three DVDs, making it bigger than any Xbox 360 title to date. According to Sakaguchi, the game required compression technology to fit onto the three disks. In uncompressed form, the game's data takes up over 30 Gigs of space!

Players can expect between 40 to 50 hours of play time for the game. Just playing through the game minus all the side quests, Sakaguchi managed to take 35 hours.

And when you get through it all, you can look forward to Xbox Live content. The first such content will hit Japan some time between the beginning of the year and Spring. Sakaguchi referred to the content as being free of charge, but he wouldn't give further details.

With work on Blue Dragon complete, you might be wondering what Sakaguchi is up to now. A whole lot, it turns out. In addition to Lost Odyssey, a demo of which was recently released to Japan, Sakaguchi is hard at work on Cry-On (Xbox 360) and A.S.H. (DS). Sakaguchi expects to finish A.S.H. in the first half of next year. Half the game is playable at this point.

On top of these three games, Sakaguchi revealed that he has three more titles in the works! Development on two of these has already started, with the third one set to begin shortly. Sakaguchi wouldn't provide specifics on the games, only stating that he'd be taking a slight trip to the West. This seems to suggest work with a publisher located to the West of Mistwalker's Tokyo studio (a list that would include Nintendo, we'll point out) on one or more of the titles, but Sakaguchi went silent when Famitsu pressed further.

The only thing missing from the Famitsu interview is info on Blue Dragon's stateside release. We expect to hear more on the international version once the Japanese version hits shops on 12/7.