This is how I understand it and I am fairly sure how it will happen (going by everything I've read and interviews I've seen):
-Japan gets it first exclusively on PS3 later this year (or possibly early next year knowing Square)
-While the English localization is happening the game will be ported to 360 at the same time for a simultaneous release on both PS3 & 360 (also I imagine all the other text/subtitle translations will be happening at the same time aswell).
It's not a case of "lets finish the Japanese and English PS3 version and then port to 360 thus delaying the English PS3 version release", but instead "lets work on localization while at the same time porting it over to 360". Which by the time they finish just about everything they need to with the English version, the 360 port should be more or less ready for Insertion, which is more or less straight forward for them because the majority of the work i.e content creation is already finished.
The release in America and Europe will take no where near aslong as it usually does because this time they are doing it differently. Usually they finish the Japanese version and get it shipped before even starting work on the English version, but for XIII it's different. This time they started localization atleast a year before release and they have also pulled in Toshiro Tsuchida* and the Front Mission team a couple of years ago to work on the game to try to speed up the work (which does get on my nerves because Front Mission is my all time favourite series
)*Toshiro Tsuchida is the director for the Front Mission series and he is also the battle director for FF XIII and he also did the battle direction on FFX too. Just a bit of useless info for you there
