The demo of Final Fantasy XIII will be available in Japan on April 16, 2009, Square Enix has revealed.

The Final Fantasy XIII demo will come bundled with the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete movie set, which goes on sale at the same time.  The demo will be PS3-exclusive, as Japan will not see FFXIII on the Xbox 360.

Earlier reports suggested that Square Enix could charge a fee for the demo of the game, which was rumoured to include 90 minutes of gameplay.  The length of the final demo has not be revealed, but it appears that Square Enix instead hopes to boost sales of its Advent Children discs rather than attempt to charge for the demo directly.

The game will also come with a Japanese-exclusive Final Fantasy PS3 bundle, which includes the Advent Children Complete Blu-rays and a 160 GB hard disk.

North American and European releases for Final Fantasy XIII won’t happen until sometime after April 2010, we learned last week, but Square Enix still hopes to get the game into Japanese hands this year.

The demo isn’t about to be released outside of Japan either, but a few die-hards will undoubtedly acquire the Japanese version and fill us in on the details.

More Final Fantasy XIII news as it comes.

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