The weekend is finally here, folks. Hopefully you’ve done most of your holiday shopping already, and won’t have to deal with the massive crowds that will inevitably fill malls across the country in the coming weekends. I highly suggest picking up Persona 4 Golden: Dancing All Night for the PS Vita lover in your life; it’s consumed all of my free time recently.

Let’s talk about today’s video game news, shall we? In this Friday installment of Gaming Daily: Square Enix explains why FFVII will be split into parts, we discuss the fact that Rise of the Tomb Raider did not crack the top 10 games of November, learn more about Towerfall coming to the Vita, some job listing hints at next game from Ken Levine, and Nintendo‘s latest patent — a new touchscreen controller.

Square Enix explains why FFVII will be split into parts.

Square just can’t get a win these days. Over the weekend we got a better look at what the FFVII Remake will look like, but since then, the company also announced it would be releasing it in parts. The internet did what they usually do (freaked out). Much shade was thrown Square’s way, and they heard it. So, Yoshinori Kitase wrote an official blog post that explains why this choice was made. Here’s a short blurb:

We’ve seen everyone’s comments and reactions to the news that FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE will be a multi-part series and many have speculated correctly as to the reason why we have made this decision. If we were to try to fit everything from the original into one remake installment, we would have to cut various parts and create a condensed version of FINAL FANTASY VII. We knew none of you would have wanted that.

In other words, this game is going to be so massive that in order to get it to you quicker, Square decided to split it into large chunks. Plus, the whole added financial bonus.

HT: Square Enix 

Rise of the Tomb Raider did not crack the top 10 the month of November.

As you can tell by our glowing review of Rise of the Tomb Raider, we absolutely loved the latest Lara Croft adventure. It has all of the action set pieces you could ask for, and everything seems to be improved compared to the title that launched a couple years ago. In other words, it’s one of the best titles of the year.

Unfortunately, consumers didn’t seem to be too interested in it, despite the critical acclaim. According to the November NPD numbers, Rise of the Tomb Raider didn’t even crack the top 10 best-selling titles of the month. It was even beat out by the likes of Just Dance 2015 — not to disparage the incredibly fun dance game, but you’d think a massive AAA title would at least make more noise, especially when it’s, for all intents and purposes, an exclusive Xbox One game.

There could be multiple reasons why this gem is not doing well. First the launch date–releasing the game on Fallout 4 was predictably dumb. Everyone was talking about Fallout on November 10, and nothing else. Second, the Xbox One install base is much smaller than the PS4 ownership. It’s hard to say how much of a lead PS4 has over Xbox One (especially since Microsoft isn’t sharing the numbers anymore), but there just aren’t as many X1s out in the wild to purchase this game. Plus people may not have like that it was a timed-exclusive.

In short: Square Enix may have sacrificed the longevity of this franchise for short-term financial gains. I for one hope publishers get the memo.

HT: VG24/7

Towerfall is coming to Vita.

The once Ouya-exclusive turned PS4/PC co-op masterpiece, Towerfall, is finally headed to the PS Vita next Tuesday, December 15. This new version will be cross-buy, so those that already own the game on the PS4 (as you should) can redeem the game for free on their handheld—same goes for the DLC. There won’t be cross-save when the game releases next week, but the hope is to add that particular feature post-launch.

Don’t know why you’d want a co-op multiplayer game on the Vita, unless you have 3 other Vita-loving friends to use the Ad-hoc option, but hey — at least we can play Towerfall on the go now. This is still one of my favorite games on the PS4, and I play it constantly. I just don’t think it’ll be well-suited for the handheld. It would have been great to be able to cross-play, but there’s no mention of that ever being supported.

VIVA LA VITA! 

HT: Gamespot 

Job listing hints at Ken Levine’s next game.

The studio headed by Bioshock creator Ken Levine has a new job listing on the Irrational Games website. The company is looking for a “Gameplay Systems Designer and Tuner” with experience in semi-open world games. There is even mention of the game being built using the Unreal Engine 4. Those alone give us an idea of what could come from this studio in the future — but wait! There’s more. The team is also looking for someone who has a “passion for narrative first-person shooters.” Hmmm… interesting. Let the speculation begin.

HT: Gameinformer

Nintendo patents new touchscreen controller.

So, it looks like Nintendo filed a patent for a brand new controller with a touchscreen. Keep in mind this is all speculation, but many believe this could be a hint at what to expect from the NX. There have been so many rumors flying around regarding Nintendo’s next console, but they get closer to launch—believed to be next year—the more these sort of things will start popping up. Here’s the patent details:

A non-limiting example information processing apparatus comprises a housing, and a first portion of the housing is formed in an elliptical form when viewing from the front. A display panel and a touch panel constitute one main surface of the first portion. Holes are formed in left and right end portions of the display panel and the touch panel, and two operation sticks are provided through the two holes. When viewing the first portion from the front, an area except key tops of the operation sticks becomes a display area.

It’s always hard to try and guess what the Big N is doing, but my guess is that this could be for a different product. I can’t imagine they’d go with the touchscreen controller given the disaster (sales-wise) the Wii U‘s been since launch. Let’s not forget that patents are always filed for gear that never see the light of day.

HT: Gameinformer 

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Make sure to take it easy these coming days, y’all. It was certainly a good week overall, and I only expect things to get more exciting in the next few weeks. Remember to keep it here for all of your nerdy needs, and gaming coverage. What are you planning on playing this weekend? Let us know in the comments below.