Sony has reported a surge of PS3 sales which, by no mere coincidence, occured during the launch of Square Enix’s highly-anticipated RPG, Final Fantasy XIII.

In fact, during the week of the launch, which occured December 17, Sony sold over 240,000 PlayStation 3 units.

Final Fantasy XIII will be released in other territories on March 9, 2010, but in Japan the game remains a PS3-exclusive. Final Fantasy game launches are always big news in Japan, and undoubtedly Japanese consumers are snatching up Sony’s console in order to play the new game.

Square Enix and Sony are releasing a new PlayStation 3 offering in Japan, featuring a PS3 branded with a Cloud Wolf logo.

The bundle includes the branded 160 GB PS3, as well as the new Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete movie set.  The Advent Children Complete set also contians a PS3 demo of the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII.

The Final Fantasy PS3 bundle goes on sale on April 16, 2009 in Japan for 49,980 yen, about $550 U.S.  There are no known plans to release the bundle outside of Japan.  The Advent Children Complete set goes on sale the same day, also containing the FF13 demo.

A little while back, Square Enix announced that it would be releasing Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360, instead of the PS3 only.

Now, it looks like the dual release will essentially be a port from one console to another. The game’s developer said at a recent Square Enix event that the Xbox 360 version won’t be developed until the PS3 version is complete.  The team doesn’t even have the Xbox 360 dev kit yet.

Square Enix also recently announced that it will release FFXIII in Japan in 2009, ruling out any hope of a release this year.  They also said a demo of the game will ship with the Blu-ray release of Advent Children next March.

Since development of the Xbox 360 version hasn’t started, though, the North American and European releases of Final Fantasy XIII will almost certainly be delayed.