Sonia Im, Square Enix's North American spokeswoman has said the company is investigating a batch of suspicious screenshots purporting to compare Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3 and Xbox 360, yet are apparently the same image with different control overlays.
Update: Square Enix has released this official statement on the matter:
Unfortunately we did mistakenly include screenshots taken for pre-production (non-promotional use only) in our latest release of assets. Screenshots from the final game intended for the press kit will be released shortly. As shown in our recent demo tour and Microsoft's X10 event, there is no material difference between the two consoles.
Our original post follows.
Via Twitter late yesterday evening, Im said, "We are looking into how the #FFXIII altered screens ended up in our presskit & will update asap. This was obviously not intentional ..."
In a subsequent message, she adds: "..Aside from easily being proven as altered, and this method not being one we use, we don't feel there is a need to enhance the X360."
Square Enix should have known it was tiptoeing into a minefield by doing a screen compare. Especially for this game, and especially given what it represents. To blow it with this kind of foul-up is about the worst outcome imaginable. The admission of the mistake is a good start, but it would have been better not to make the decision that led to it in the first place.
Sonia Im on Twitter [Twitter]