I never realised this before, but there is a scene in the Farplane where Shinra says something about a force or something that sounds very similar to the Lifestream in FFVII. He also mentions a huge city, which could easily be Midgar. So, maybe FFX-2 Shinra founded the FFVII Shinra company...

yeah there is a thread about this in the FF beyond section

Big deal really. If you look hard enough, there's quite alot of things that are similar in all Final Fantasy games. It means nothing and it has nothing to do with one or another game in the series.

battles

There are big refrences to ff7, in the ffx-2 Ultimania guide, it explains about Shinra's research after ffx-2, and about another planet being discovored.

I seriously do not want to have this discussion again... :)