What you need to know
- Xbox has been doing well getting Japanese publishers to support Xbox, but there are some notable gaps in its line-up.
- While Yakuza and Persona have arrived on Xbox and continue to perform well, major mainline Final Fantasy entries like FF16 and FF7 are still missing, and remain PlayStation exclusive.
- In a new interview with our colleagues at GamesRadar, new comments seem to increase the chances of getting Final Fantasy 7 Remake onto Xbox some day.
Microsoft’s Xbox platform is doing incredibly well as it closes out 2024. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 beat previous engagement records, timed exclusive STALKER 2 hit 1 million in sales and found even more players on Xbox Game Pass, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is incredibly promising, set to drop in December. But it hasn’t all be rosy.
Xbox hardware sales continue to decline, and a common narrative online points to the console’s content gap. Many major franchises have been historically missing from the Xbox platform, although the situation has improved over time. Franchises like Yakuza, Genshin Impact, and Persona have made the leap across to team green, but there’s one nostalgic and glaring omission that has many users of a certain age feeling left out.
The Final Fantasy franchise is not the powerhouse it once was, for a variety of reasons. Inconsistent quality and wildly diverging gameplay experiments game-over-game have divided up the fanbase and undermined the franchise’s nostalgia. But also, the fact that Final Fantasy games generally only ship on one platform at a time. Without full multi-platform might, Final Fantasy as a brand struggles to find its voice in a crowded, and increasingly algorithmic discovery market, and publisher Square Enix knows it. As such, Square Enix has pledged to move to multi-platform game development, Xbox included. It started with Final Fantasy 14 and Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters for Xbox players, but Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy 16 are still missing as of writing. There’s hope, though.
I previously wrote that I’d heard the “full” slate of Final Fantasy games are on the table for Xbox ports, and that seems at least tentatively confirmed by a new interview in our sister site GamesRadar. Naoki Hamaguchi, game director on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, confirmed himself as an Xbox fan, while discussing Square Enix’s move to multi-platform game development.
“In terms of Final Fantasy 7, there’s nothing really we can say at the moment, but certainly I do want to bring Final Fantasy 7 and the Remake series to as many players out there as possible. So we want to create that situation, that environment, where more players can play the games in future, and we want to look in that direction.”
Naoki Hamaguchi reflected that the game industry has become multi-polar by nature, and that more and more games will seek multi-platform status in the future, beyond Square Enix’s. “I think this goes beyond Final Fantasy 7,” he said, “It really is a change in the industry, and I think certainly we’re feeling right now that the industry has changed in terms of there being so many different platforms and environments that people play games on these days.
He noted that the endpoints for accessing games were far more numerous in today’s times, compared to the past, while also giving a shout out to Xbox in the process. “It’s so much more diversified now, so I think that’s that’s probably why our CEO, Mr. [Takashi] Kiryu, made that decision to move more in the direction of multiplatform – that’s just the way that the industry is going. […] This is just a personal opinion now, but I’ve got an Xbox myself. I think it’s a great hardware platform. I do like Xbox.”
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More Final Fantasy for Xbox
Microsoft has done well to court interest from publishers that historically eschewed Xbox, although there is work to be done. Some of 2024’s biggest games, such as Black Myth Wukong and Stellar Blade have sadly side-stepped Xbox so far, and Microsoft was years behind capitalizing on the gatcha craze with Genshin Impact only launching on Xbox this month. It hasn’t all been losses, though. I already mentioned STALKER 2, which has given Xbox a strong timed console exclusive of its own this month. There was also the massive Palworld craze last year, both of which shows that Xbox can pick winners from time to time. Microsoft also managed to land Hideo Kojima’s high-profile PlayStation exclusive Death Stranding for Xbox only recently.
Naoki Hamaguchi is correct in suggesting that we’re moving to a more multi-platform gaming landscape. Xbox CEO Phil Spencer himself emphasized that even more Xbox games could launch on PlayStation in the future. There’s more competition for consumer’s attention than ever before, and if you’re not hitting every available endpoint, the likelihood you can get your product into a “trending” state is diminished. While that universe may hurt Xbox hardware sales on paper, things like Xbox Cloud Gaming (which now includes buy-to-own games) will ensure the Microsoft game development environment remains lucrative for creators long term. Indeed, both Phil Spencer and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reported to investors repeatedly that Xbox has more active console users than ever, and continues to grow.
Hopefully, those users will also be playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Rebirth, and its upcoming third iteration as soon as possible. Perhaps we can also convince Square Enix to make Final Fantasy 17 turn-based too …
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