This failure is compounded by the fact that Square-Enix hasn't even made full use of all the disk space it has available. Around 1GB of storage is left empty on discs one and two of FFXIII, and you have to wonder why all that empty space couldn't have been repurposed for higher bandwidth encoding. Perhaps it's because of the background loading taking place while the cut-scenes play out, but regardless, the hit to quality using Bink is often unacceptably bad.

Perhaps Square Enix might like to take some cues from the movie industry: top-tier studios employ compressionists whose sole job it is to make movie encodes look as good as they can possibly be within the confines of the disc space available. The parallel is not without some merit: the same encoding tools Microsoft developed for Blu-ray and HD-DVD movie compression might even be deployed for exactly this kind of thing, assuming that the 360's VC1 decoder is up to scratch.

Failing that, there are any number of h264 decoders out there that could be licensed and ported to the Microsoft console. The bottom line is that if FMV is so crucial to your game, and the storage on offer is limited, care needs to be taken so that every byte of available space makes a difference.