Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida has shared that Square Enix does still plan to release its games on multiple platforms simultaneously “more and more.”
Square Enix isn’t quite the top dog it used to be in the game industry, with Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth both failing to meet expectations. There’s lots of reasons that might be the case, but one of them is almost definitely the fact that going multiplatform is the way to go for most developers these days, but Square has mostly kept to PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch in recent years. But because of these recent struggles, it has shifted plans to make sure its games release on Xbox and PC too, and it seems like these plans are in full effect, based on some recent comments from Yoshi-P.
Speaking with 4Gamer (translated by VGC) about the upcoming release of Fantasian Neo Dimension, Yoshi-P said that Square Enix wants you to play this new version of the previously iOS-exclusive “a lot on other platforms as well,” continuing on to say, “This time, we will also release the Xbox Series X|S version at the same time. In the future, Square Enix titles will be released simultaneously on each platform more and more, but since this is close to the first release, we would like Xbox users to play it as well.”
That’s obviously good news for Xbox fans in particular, who have been quite shafted when it comes to playing Square Enix’s bigger titles in recent years – heavy PS4 hitters like Final Fantasy 15 and Kingdom Hearts 3 both came out on Xbox One at the time, but jump forward to Final Fantasy 7 Remake/ Rebirth and 16, you’re out of luck unless you own a PlayStation (though Remake and 16 did later come to PC).
Whether going full multiplatform will help Square Enix achieve its lofty sales goals or not is another question, but with two parts of a trilogy only being available on one platform doesn’t spell success for the third part, even if it is multiplatform – though it probably won’t be. I’m sure Final Fantasy 17 will be the one that’s a modern hit!