Final Fantasy 16 won’t be delayed ‘unless a meteor falls on Japan’
Final Fantasy 16 will be released on PlayStation 5 on June 22, and with just a few months left until the action-focused role-playing game’s arrival, producer Naoki Yoshida feels confident about that date.
“I know Final Fantasy games can get delayed at the last minute,” Yoshida said in translated comments at a press event for Final Fantasy16 held in New York earlier this month, but “unless a meteor falls on Japan, there will be no delay.”
While Yoshida didn’t outright name the other Final Fantasy games he was referring to, it was an oblique reference to the most recent major mainline entries in the series: Final Fantasy 15 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Back in 2016, Square Enix announced just six weeks before Final Fantasy 15’s intended launch, that it was delaying the game another two months. Game director Hajime Tabata apologized for the delay, which Square Enix chalked up to a need for polish. The situation with Final Fantasy 7 Remake was similar; in early 2020, Square Enix delayed the remake another seven weeks after committing to a release date.
Those delays are likely why Square Enix never offered a hard release date for Final Fantasy 16 for so long. The publisher finally locked down the game’s June release date in December at The Game Awards.
Final Fantasy 16 was originally announced in September 2020. Development of the game was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Yoshida said in 2021, and the publisher seemed overly cautious about targeting any kind of release window until the following year, when a summer 2023 release was penciled in.
Final Fantasy16 will, barring a cataclysmic disaster, come to PlayStation 5 in June. A PC version was previously announced, but has no release window.
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