During the course of an interview with the Dutch version of the Official Playstation Magazine, Yoshinori Kitase – the producer of Final Fantasy XIII (FFXIII), Square Enix’s first big game for the PlayStation 3 – acknowledged the fact that the game was originally being developed for the PlayStation 2.

As per the translated interview, Kitase said: “Final Fantasy XIII was originally meant to be a PS2 title, but we had to switch systems due to the arrival of the PS3. That cost us about one and a half years and was constantly a case of trial and error.”

The revelation by Kitase underlines the reason behind the long delay between the development and release stage of FFXIII – which is finally scheduled to hit the stores in North America and Europe on March 9. The game has recently been released in Japan as “Scenario and Battle Ultimania.”

According to Kitase, a positive dimension of the game’s delay of the game was that during the rather long time period the game’s developer team had to work hard in the beginning and then gain swift momentum; thereby facilitating the early-stage translation and international voice recording processes.

Kitase also added that earlier there were plans to put in additional content to the western version of the game to compensate for the delay; but those plans have now been deferred.