Remember that beautiful Japanese Final Fantasy XIII bundle, with the white Playstation 3 and pink sprawling artwork on the front? Remember how bad we all wanted it, and how dissapointed we were when Sony hated on us and didn’t make it happen? Well, all that sadness disappeared and was replaced with joy on finding out the 360 was getting its own FFXIII bundle, right here in the states. That is until I saw what we were actually getting with this “bundle.”

Upon clicking on the Amazon link, I was confronted with the nice “Final Fantasy Xbox360 bundle” right at the top of the page and was excited. But as I scrolled down, I noticed in the picture the Xbox360 looked exactly like the one sitting in my living room. Where was the cool art design on the casing? Or the coloring that makes it scream Final Fantasy!? Nowhere to be found. The “bundle” that we are getting is no more than a white version of the elite xbox 360 system(with a 250 GB hard drive big enough to allow downloading the game to the drive) and a copy of the game. Woo.

Four hundred dollars later and all you have is a console, the game, an extra controller, and a wireless headset. Because you know, they want to prepare you for all the great multiplayer fun waiting for you in Final Fantasy XIII. I wish I could be introduced to the dufus who puts together these bundles if only to see the marketing smarts behind it. Maybe once you get this bundle and realize you cannot use the other controller for anything, they will seduce you into buying more games? Regardless, they could have at least etched a cool graphic on the system or make it stand out as a Final Fantasy bundle somehow rather than just put everything in a box and call it one. Not impressed Microsoft, not impressed at all.

Just to make you even more mad, here is the PS3 console Japan got with their bundle.

I hate you Japan. Hate.