Grandia Joins Japanese PSN – US PS3 Owners Cry

As you already know, last week was a significant milestone for the Playstation Store, in that the Asian shopfronts for Sony’s digital distribution service were granted the addition of Final Fantasy VII.  Western users were not so lucky. 

It would appear that Sony Japan has decided to twist the knife this week.  Not even seven whole days after Squaresoft’s PS1 magnum opus was released, another classic RPG joins it on the PS Store – this week, it’s Grandia.  Best known for its intuitive battle system and its status as one of the earlier PS1 RPGs to feature voice acting, Grandia serves as yet another example why SCEA’s treatment of the PS1 Classics line is truly insulting to any nostalgic PS3 owner. Like Final Fantasy VII’s addition last week, Grandia’s appearance is an interesting form of cross-marketing; developers Game Arts, best known in recent years for developing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, are making an announcement about their upcoming MMORPG, Grandia Online, next month; the PSN addition of the game is being done as a tie-in with that announcement.  While it’s possible that this could be Game Arts laying the framework for a PS3 release of Grandia Online, we’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I’ll be hoping with all of you that when tomorrow’s Playstation Store update comes around, there’s at least one new PS1 game on the list…but at this point, it’s starting to get hard to even bother.