Square/Enix announces a new mobile MMO

Square/Enix, makers of the well-known Final Fantasy series, has announced their lineup for much of the year. Along with news of more ports of some of the older games to new systems and advances in the DragonQuest series, they've released word of a brand new mobile phone MMO. Right now it looks like it's going to be Japan-only, which makes a lot of sense; Japanese culture essentially requires the use of a cell phone to keep in touch with friends.

The game, called Ellark, will be a free-to-play title with a microtransaction payment model. The company is planning an entire currency around this concept, calling it a MobiCoin service. There aren't many good English language descriptions of their plans, but MobiCoin is a concept that's been tossed around for some time. There isn't much to discuss as far as gameplay goes, but the service will apparently make use of text messaging for communication between players. The release calls Ellark a "Mail Play Game", which has some interesting possible permutations.

[Via Worlds in Motion]