Last week, Final Fantasy XVI was finally released on PC after over a year of PlayStation 5 exclusivity. The title managed to set the fourth-highest concurrent player count for a Square Enix game on Steam with 27,508 players (according to SteamDB). This beats Final Fantasy VII Remake, which has only seen a top concurrent player count of 13,803.
In terms of Square Enix titles, Final Fantasy XVI is only losing to Final Fantasy XV, NieR: Replicant, and, of course, Final Fantasy XIV.
Ahead of the game’s PC release, Naoki Yoshida, the producer of Final Fantasy XVI, asked that PC players refrain from installing or creating inappropriate or offensive mods. A quick look at Nexus Mods confirms that no explicitly adult mods have been created just yet, but it’s hard to believe it’ll take too long.
Although XVI struck many as marking a large divergence from typical Final Fantasy games released in the past, Square Enix’s gamble seems to have paid off, as last year’s mainline title brought in tons of new, young fans.
“In recent years, players of the Final Fantasy series have tended to skew towards a higher age range,” XIV DLC director Takeo Kujiraoka said. “However, this time survey results show that more people in their teens and 20s played Final Fantasy XVI. I think this shows that, to a certain extent, we’ve achieved one of our initial goals – to have players of all ages play the latest Final Fantasy game.”
Final Fantasy XVI was released in June 2023 exclusively for the PlayStation 5. It was released for PC on September 17.
