In an interview with Square Enix head honcho Yoichi Wada, it was revealed that their upcoming PS3-exclusive, Final Fantasy XIII, might branch out to different means of publishing. This was discussed during a meeting with stockholders, in which Wada had a quick Q&A session with those who were present.

In between discussing Square Enix's progress in the world of finances and markets, they touched on FF13. Because seriously, part of a game's success could be determined how well it is marketed to the audience, and how accessible you want to make it for the consumer. Now, remember when Wada said he wanted simultaneous worldwide releases? Well, this might be a spin-off solution to that.

The long and short of it: Wada reveals that they're planning to offer Final Fantasy XIII, not only on retail shelves, but also as an online rental (probably over the PlayStation Network). Here's an excerpt of the interview/Q&A, as translated to English by the guys over at Forever Fantasy:

Q: FF13 is on its way, but in the current game market, the more you ship, the more your titles end up in used game stores, returning no profit to the developer. Given that, would it be possible for you to rent games out similar to movies?

A: Your opinion is very important, thank you very much.

The current generation of games all incorporate some type of network connectivity, which means almost all need online resources. Even titles without online play have online rankings, leaderboards and so on.

In correspondence with the online component, we believe the restrictions of physical media leading to the used game sales problem can be worked out.

Rather than renting out the physical media of titles, we're thinking more along the lines of an online solution.

You may click the Via link below to read the full Q&A session (you'll need a translator though).