It’s now been confirmed. PlayStation 5 exclusive Final Fantasy XVI has a serious bug that causes PlayStation 5 consoles to overheat and even crash.
This comes from PSU, who also had to set aside their skepticism after seeing multiple accounts of the issue come up from across the internet. While there is good reason to believe an astro-turfing or similar campaign could fake such an issue, at this point there are too many issues coming up, and it’s been going on for too long as well.
What happens is, if you play Fantasy XVI on graphics mode, and you get to the cutscene that starts the boss fight with the Knight of the Lasting Dark, your PlayStation 5 will suddenly start blinking, the screen will go dark, and the game abruptly stops.
The PlayStation 5, of course, is making the correct signals to indicate that it is overheating.
As of this writing, Square Enix and PlayStation have yet to publicly address the issue. It’s highly likely that they also did not expect to see it popping up, and are as confused as gamers are.
Graphics mode is intended to give players the best viewing experience of the game possible, particularly important if your home theatre setup includes a 4K or 8K screen. This mode also limits framerate to 30 FPS, but the payoff should be worth it, if you have the proper hardware for 4K display.
On the other hand, this issue reportedly does not come up when you enter the boss fight in performance mode. PSU themselves claim they didn’t see any such issue themselves in their playthrough of the game, and they used performance mode.
It’s particularly perplexing to see this issue come up after Sony and Square Enix talked up the extent of their collaboration for Fantasy XVI.
As Square Enix themselves said, they were blown away by the console’s speed, thanks to its use of SSD storage. Sony themselves have been helping them make the game the whole way through. This partly explained the game’s exclusivity to their console.
The way it looks, is that this was a serious oversight for Sony and Square Enix together. Somehow, they missed this issue coming up during game testing.
One can say everyone makes mistakes, but this mistake in particular has been costly to Sony’s loyal fans. Hopefully Sony and Square Enix will provide a solution that is proportionate to the stress and risk they put PlayStation 5 owners through.
You can see the original cutscene, as well as the overheating issue as it appears live, below.
