Square Enix has made a major announcement regarding Kingdom Hearts IV, quietly tucked away.
In yesterday’s press release, where they revealed the release date of the Kingdom Hearts games coming to Steam, they include this message:
“KINGDOM HEARTS IV, the next mainline entry in the series, is currently in development for console devices, and the back catalog of KINGDOM HEARTS titles will launch on Steam on June 13, 2024.”
The key words here, of course, being “for console devices.” But why is such a vague statement so important?
The Kingdom Hearts was originally published exclusively on PlayStation consoles. When the franchise started in 2002, this decision made sense. The PlayStation 2 was considerably different in architecture from the Xbox, the GameCube, and Windows XP. This game also released two years into the PlayStation 2’s lifespan, when it was clear that this would be the lead platform for that generation.
For these reasons, both Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 were exclusive to the PlayStation 2. Square Enix made various spinoffs on different platforms, such as Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories on the Game Boy Advance, but for over a decade, the franchise was only available on PlayStation.
And then, in 2013, Square Enix revealed they would bring Kingdom Hearts III simultaneously to both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. At this point, there were significant changes to the industry that would push Square in this direction.
For one, the video game industry had become bigger than when Kingdom Hearts and the PlayStation 2 were the top of the world. Mobile gaming had effectively carved out its own place in the industry, and all of a sudden Minecraft’s Creepers were more famous to kids than Sora. Square Enix felt the pressure to make their franchise more relevant, and that meant expanding beyond their already huge fanbase among PlayStation fans.
This decision was made easier by the fact that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were more like each other than previous generations of consoles were. In fact, when the Switch came along, developers found that it, too, was similar enough to both consoles, that it was possible for developers to make more multiplatform releases.
But of course, what really happened here is all three platforms were now closer to consumer gaming PCs than they had been in previous generations. And that meant many technologies developers used making games on PCs, can be carried over successfully to those platforms. They are not all the same platform, but, they are close enough that Nightdive Studios has successfully made every one of their revivals of classic FPS games multiplatform.
Kingdom Hearts IV will no doubt be a huge production, but with Square Enix now choosing to be more multiplatform, it’s time for their big IP with Disney to spread to as many platforms as it can. And of course, Square Enix is bound to do the same for Final Fantasy, based on their own statements. With these moves, these games can become household names yet again.
