What you need to know
- Square Enix is a major Japanese publisher, known for the Final Fantasy series among others.
- In recent years, Final Fantasy began skipping the entire Xbox platform, opting for PlayStation exclusivity.
- Subsequently, Square Enix has denounced its exclusivity plans blaming declining sales, with aims to launch games on Steam for Windows more regularly.
- As an extension, the firm has also pledged support for Microsoft's Xbox console, with games like Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, Legend of Mana, and Dragon Quest all slated for the console.
- Now, Square Enix has confirmed aims to bring flagship titles like Final Fantasy 16 across as well.
A short while ago, I shared on my XB2 Podcast that I'd heard Square Enix was looking to bring its entire slate of Final Fantasy games to Xbox, including Final Fantasy 16. Now, we have some confirmation that that is indeed the plan.
Speaking in a new interview (via HazzadorGamin), Square Enix legend Naoki Yoshida (often known affectionately by fans as Yoshi-P), confirmed that Final Fantasy 16 is slated for Xbox, although stopped short of offering a timeframe.
Final Fantasy 16 took the franchise into more of an action hack n' slash direction, riffing on games like Devil May Cry. While some fans lamented the lack of tactical combat prevalent in previous games, the game's spectacular combat visuals won over many new and returning fans regardless. However, the game was up until recently, fully exclusive to PlayStation 5. Final Fantasy 16 has since launched on Steam for PC, however, and managed to hit 27,000~ concurrent players at peak. Although you'd have to wonder how much more it might've done if it had launched simultaneously with its PlayStation version, taking advantage of the marketing cycle from its initial launch.
RELATED: Will Final Fantasy 16 come to Xbox?
Indeed, Square Enix has commented repeatedly about its recent Final Fantasy games, saying that they've "missed targets" (via IGN). To that end, Square Enix has begun adopting more of a multi-platform approach, with games like Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster launching on Xbox, as well as the World of Warcraft MMORPG competitor Final Fantasy 14. "Now we are moving towards the policy of releasing our games on a multiplatform basis, and we really want as many players as possible to play our titles," Naoki Yoshida previously said.
In the new interview, Naoki Yoshida emphasized that Square Enix is planning to bring flagship titles like Final Fantasy 16 to Xbox as well, although it seems more like an aspirational plan right now, given the firm's growing pains as it moves towards multi-platform game development.
"Of course we did announce the PC version of the game, so looking towards the Xbox version, we do want to release it on Xbox," Yoshida said. "But when it comes to the specifics such as when the game would be available and such, we are not in a position to be able to share anything. But of course, I want to say that it’s not as if there’s zero hope, and we very much do want to achieve that. So players should not give up in terms of their hopes."
I've heard via trusted sources that Microsoft is working heavily with Square Enix to make games like Final Fantasy 16 and even Final Fantasy 7 Remake on Xbox a reality. Microsoft has made a prolific effort to repair its relationships with Japanese and Asia-region developers in recent years, with a large Xbox outreach presence at the Tokyo Game Show to meet publishers and teams of all shapes and sizes.
Microsoft worked hard to bring games like Genshin Impact, Yakuza, and Persona to Xbox, finally, and developers like Koei Tecmo and Square Enix have also begun to support the platform a little more in recent months too.
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Square Enix's support of Xbox is very welcome
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Elsewhere in the interview, Yoshida mentions fan's requests to remake Final Fantasy 9, heralded by many as one of the franchise's brightest spots. He laments that the size of the game would mean the remake would have to make up several parts, and thus be incredibly costly and risky. Final Fantasy 7, for example, has been an incredibly huge and unwieldy project for Square Enix, with the firm claiming both FF7 Remake and Rebirth missed their sales projections.
I wrote on Twitter earlier today that I'd love to see Square Enix revive classics like Parasite Eve with a Capcom-like flair, but not every game needs to have a massive AAA budget remake in order to be good. Would the PlayStation 1 version of Final Fantasy 9 benefit from a multi-part Unreal Engine 5 AAA extravaganza? Or could it still thrill new audiences in similar fashion to the modern Persona games, with text-based dialogue and more simplistic, albeit stylish visuals?
It has been interesting watching Final Fantasy evolve as a long time fan. I wasn't initially enamoured with the switch to hack n' slash gameplay, but I felt it worked quite well in Final Fantasy 7 Remake when I did my review, striking a good balance between the old and the new. Wider audiences didn't seem too interested, though, judging by Square's comments on sales. Younger cohorts seem more interested in the heavily anime-styled JRPGs in recent years, such as Genshin Impact. Persona 5 Royal almost doubled Final Fantasy 16's maximum player count on Steam, although Final Fantasy 16's lofty PC requirements don't exactly open it up to a broad audience.
Hopefully, bringing Final Fantasy to Xbox helps Square Enix recoup some of its costs there, while it searches for what the future of Final Fantasy looks like. I suspect Final Fantasy's future success may hinge on making its visual requirements less intensive to target a broader subset of PC users, while also simultaneously launching across all platforms.
