The Dutch Official PlayStation Magazine reported that the PS2 version of FFXIII was in development for a while before it was scrapped and moved to PS3. The PS2 working version used placeholder characters Yuna and Rikku from Final Fantasy X-2, a new battle system (that FFXIII was based on) and graphic style that was more cartoony than FFXIII. The development team spent 1.5 year of trial and error efforts to build a new engine for the game to run on PS3.
Kitase also commented that because they worked so hard at the beginning, the development was a lot faster than their plan and they were able start on English translation and voice recording process at an early stage, which resulted in a much quicker International release, just 3 months after the Japanese release.
Kitase also explained the reason they used different theme song in the foreign version of FFXIII, it was a new "tactic" or experiment if you will. When Square Enix tried to translate the Japanese theme song Kimi Ga Iru Kara to English, the singer had difficulties with it and they came up with the solution to use a different song that matches the atmosphere of the game content, and they chose Leona Lewis' My Hands.
