Final Fantasy faces no "existential risk" despite lower-than-hoped PS5 sales, says FF16 director

rockpapershotgun.com:

Please lock your Chocobos to attack position and set your Phoenix Downs to stun: Square Enix have released fresh details of Final Fantasy 16's PC port, which has now been dated for launch on 17th September. They've also shared a little about why it's taken so long to arrive - the (generally decent) action-RPG hit PS5 over a year ago, back when I was still some filthy console-playing freelancer.

According to director Hiroshi Takai, it was "impossible" to create the PC and PS5 versions at the same time, even if Square Enix hadn't been restrained by a timed exclusivity clause. He also thinks that the Final Fantasy series faces no "existential risk" right now, despite lower-than-hoped returns from both Final Fantasy 16 and, going by Square Enix's latest financial reports, the more recent and currently PS5-only Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Final Fantasy has a track record for showing up fashionably late on PC - it took Final Fantasy 7 Remake, first of the FF7 reboots, well over a year to land on Epic Games Store following its PS4 launch. As regards Final Fantasy 16 specifically, Square Enix had to work around a six month exclusivity deal with Sony and PS5 following the initial release in June 2023. Producer Naoki Yoshida has also indulged in a touch of bait-and-switch with journalists, jocularly denying that Square Enix had ever announced the game for PC at one point. I suspect the uneven communication there has less to do with trolling than with the unpredictable nature of game development.

"The reasons vary for each title, but in the case of FFXVI, it primarily comes down to the original game being tailored for the PS5 in a lot of different ways, and it was impossible to do this at the same time as all the optimization work that was needed for the PC version," Takai told me over email, when I asked why this and other Final Fantasy games tend to arrive later on PC. He was unable to tell me anything about the specifics of the PC version's development, other than that this is