Final Fantasy faces no "existential risk" despite lower-than-hoped PS5 sales, says FF16 director
FF16 PC port release date arrives alongside demo
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 the same team who made the original PS5 version.
So what do PC Final Fantasisers get for their patience? For starters, the port will accompany a Complete Edition which includes two DLC packs, Echoes Of The Fallen and The Rising Tide. I haven't played either of those, but they seem reasonably juicy. Echoes Of The Fallen's offerings include a new final dungeon, while Rising Tide packs a new region, an endgame mode and new abilities for this iteration's protagonist Clive Rosefield - "Devil May Clive", as I boisterously call him down the pub, forgetting that all my friends got sick of that joke over Xmas.
Square Enix have also added a bunch of new graphics and performance settings, as you'd expect. "Since PC gamers all have different PCs with different specs, we've provided extensive configuration options to maximize flexibility," Takai told me. "We've increased the frame rate cap to 240fps, and you can choose from various upscaling technologies such as NVIDIA DLSS3, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS."
Argh, so many letters and numbers! Where is hardware editor James to translate? Oh dang, I think he's gone to Gamescom. I feel like Final Fantasy games should have their own bespoke jargon for graphics features, blending third-party terminology with the series own naming conventions. Any PC RPG can boast of supporting upscaling, but only a Final Fantasy game could get away with e.g. Fabula Nova CrystaLSSIII or AMD Fenrir Shiva Ragnarok.
Square Enix have made a big noise about pushing beyond console lately. In May this year, the publishers promised "aggressive" expansion to other platforms, perhaps in light of the fact that FF16 did not meet the company's expectations on PS5. They said they wanted to "win over PC users" especially. With that in mind, I asked Takai whether Square Enix feels the audience for Final Fantasy games differs much between console and PC. "That's a difficult question!" he said, before proceeding to answer it very straightforwardly.
"Honestly, there's not much difference between playing games on PC and consoles these days, so I don't know if there's any real difference when it comes to FF fans," Takai commented. "However, more people have access to a PC, so I'm hoping we can get the game into the hands of a broader audience of gamers with the PC version."
The company have yet to share sales of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which released on PS5 in February, but they have reported a year-on-year overall game sales drop, offset by relatively steady returns from subscription-based MMO Final Fantasy 14. All this notwithstanding, Takai doesn't think the Final Fantasy series has become unsustainable and in need of a fundamental rethink, not least because Square Enix are always rethinking it.
"While it's always important to balance development costs with sales, I don't think there's any kind of existential risk for the series," he told me. "As developers, we just need to keep creating what we think is fun - and if players think to themselves, 'they went in a new direction this time, but it was still fun', then maybe that's all the dramatic change we need."
If you're curious about FF16 on PC, I've saved the best for last: there's now a demo on Steam and the Epic Games Store.