Sony came out swinging this week with its latest PlayStation Showcase, revealing not only when (soon) and how much you’ll pay for a PS5 console (so so much), but also a number of games that’ll set the scene for the early days of the console. You don’t get much bigger than Final Fantasy though, especially when the game shown off from that series bears a proper collection of Roman numerals next to its title.
The catch here, was that Final Fantasy ExVeeEye Final Fantasy 16 was shown off running on a PC, as opposed to organic PS5 gameplay footage. It’s likely that the game will look similar once it has been released on that shiny new console, so there’s nothing to worry about really. If you were thinking that Final Fantasy 16 was going to be hitting PC the same time as PS5 though, then prepared to have a lvl. 99 Modern Gaming spell cast at your face because that’s not happening…yet.
After a confusing bout of messaging from Sony and Square Enix, Gematsu got to the bottom of the platform case and received the following message from the Final Fantasy publisher on the current status of the 16th core game:
We have no further information on if [Final Fantasy 16] will be released on platforms other than the PS5.
And there you go, miscommunication solved. What happened this week was that Sony’s upfront honesty during the game reveal cut short Square Enix’s plans to announce that Final Fantasy 16 would be coming to PC eventually. It’s also worth noting that this seems to be its current plan regarding Final Fantasy games, as Final Fantasy 7 Remake still has several months to go before its timed exclusivity on PS4 is up.
Industry analyst Piers Harding-Rolls added his own take on the release window for FF16, saying that it’ll arrive on PC six months after its PS5 release, and on Xbox Series X and Series S a year later:
While the PS5 Showcase stream included the aforementioned text revealing that the FF16 footage had been captured on PC, the solo trailer uploads on the PlayStation and Square Enix YouTube accounts has omitted that bit of information. I’m still looking forward to the game, especially with its premise of destroying crystals which can only mean that the game will tackle the greatest scourge to ever hoodwink humanity: Those damn homeopaths.
Last Updated: September 18, 2020
For the Emperor!
September 18, 2020 at 13:41
Lol, those pesky homeopaths should stay off my lawn!
I have no problem with times exclusives though, especially if it comes down to Dev effort. I understand cross platform (in my case cross browser) can be a bother sometimes, so rather get it out on one with fewer issues first, then roll out the others. Doesn’t work in my case as a website goes live everywhere lol.