Square Enix has made a troubling update for the Kingdom Hearts franchise.
The official Kingdom Hearts Missing Link Twitter account has revealed that they have delayed the game indefinitely. The statement goes like this:
“While preparing for the launch of “KINGDOM HEARTS Missing-Link”, we have made the difficult decision to delay the release.
We sincerely apologize to all players who have been looking forward to the release.
We appreciate your patience. Please look forward to further information.”
Kingdom Hearts Missing Link is a Pokémon Go-like augmented reality game, where you bring your phone or tablet to different locations to play, and you can meet up with other players in those real-life locations. As reported by Noisy Pixel, the latest update that Square Enix published for its beta was from last May. Beta players were free to share the gameplay and cutscenes they had, but mysteriously, Square Enix has stayed mum on the game until now.
This in itself is not necessarily a sign of bad things going on for Kingdom Hearts as a whole. Last June, Square Enix finally brought their main Kingdom Hearts games to Steam, the latest step in their new shift to make the franchise, and Square Enix’s game output in general, to go multiplatform.
So one could speculate that whatever issues Kingdom Hearts Missing Link has that required a delay may be isolated to the game itself. But we can’t avoid talking about possible issues surrounding the franchise, because Square Enix itself is having struggles as a whole.
This all went down last May. In their financial report for that month, Square Enix announced that their big releases of this year, Foamstars, Final Fantasy XVI, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, all failed to meet sales expectations. Subsequently, they announced restructuring and layoffs in the game company, and that they would be shifting strategies to publish their games in more platforms.
Square Enix is certainly not lacking for big name IP right now, between Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Just Cause, and Life is Strange. It’s somewhat an unfortunate consequence of this that Kingdom Hearts isn’t getting as much attention as those other franchises, and that includes this comparatively smaller spinoff. We know Square Enix is hard at work on Kingdom Hearts 4 too, but in spite of the many rumors about when Square Enix will preview the next game, we have yet to actually see it come to pass.
But if Square Enix isn’t ready to show their next Kingdom Hearts project, maybe it’s time for Kingdom Hearts’ actual owner – Disney – to show us their next Kingdom Hearts project. That could be a movie or a show, that will hopefully explain their side of the crossover universe, to distinguish it from Disney Dreamlight Valley’s and Wreck-it-Ralph’s crossover universes.
They really can’t afford to wait too long, because if Disney and Square Enix let the IP go dormant they will have to reintroduce it all over again. Disney is Kingdom Hearts‘ biggest chance to go mainstream, and in this era of successful video game adaptations, it’s the best time for them to try.
