Last year, NateDrake AKA Nate The Hate claimed that Final Fantasy 16 was locked in to come to Xbox Series X|S. Today, he shares an update on this, and other Final Fantasy titles, and even other consoles.
He made three consecutive posts earlier today on a ResetERA thread about Xbox Game Studios.
First, he answered someone asking about more Square Enix games coming to Xbox:
“Barring any late changes, FF16 announcement/release for Xbox will be soon — no, not in the immediate future; but it should release by/around mid-first half of 2025 (around Spring, basically).”
Nate then answered an inquiry about ‘more FF7R’ coming this year:
“FF7 Remake is planned for later this year. Rebirth is 2026. Announcement timing is the only unknown; but I’d imagine all three (FFXVI, Remake and Rebirth) will be announced at the same time for maximum impact.”
Finally Nate made this surprising revelation about how these Xbox releases relate to the Switch 2:
“FF16 is not planned for Switch 2, currently. A decision was made to prioritize FF7 Remake & Rebirth.”
Given that Square Enix made it clear they are shifting their strategies to be more multiplatform, it’s interesting that they aren’t as ready to support the Switch 2 as it initially appeared. One would assume that Square Enix has a better relationship with Nintendo than with Xbox that this would have been locked in. Nintendo literally owns Square Enix stock!
One would wonder if this was simply a matter of convenience. With Square Enix’s business on the mend, they may not have been in a position to prepare ports of games these big for Xbox and Switch 2 at the same time. We assume that Nintendo would have given Square Enix Switch 2 developer kits in advance as well, but they may not necessarily be pushing the company around to favor them.
It’s perfectly credible to assume that Square Enix was preparing these ports for Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth a long time ago, possibly before they even announced some of these games. We think they did focus solely on PlayStation 5 as first console as bound by legal agreements with Sony. But they could have been studying Xbox Series X|S developer kits and getting support from Microsoft to prepare for when their legal obligations ended.
It may be just as well for Nintendo fans, because Square Enix may not necessarily have made the best versions of these 9th generation console games for the Switch 2 if they tried to finish them in time for the launch year.
We certainly hope Square saw that Nintendo fans wanted better than the cloud versions of the Kingdom Hearts games on their platforms, and prepared real ports of those games for the Switch 2 instead. They could even bring back old Nintendo exclusives Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep to force the completists to double or triple dip.
With all that said, this will be a huge get for Microsoft, as they would have completed the long evasive goal of getting the major Japanese RPG franchises on their platform. Between Final Fantasy, Persona, and Yakuza/Like A Dragon, Xbox has successfully caught up with PlayStation on this front.
