According to a new report from the Washington Post, Sony has acquired the exclusivity rights to the Final Fantasy VII trilogy as the series moves toward its final act. While the possibility of this has been assumed for quite some time, the second act Rebirth, was marketed as having only three months of exclusivity before it could be ported to other platforms.
While there have been no details as to what this major deal entails, it appears that at least for the Xbox platform, this seemingly confirms that there will not be any ported version of the series to appear on them moving forward.
Final Fantasy VII Remake, the first game in this remade series, was released in 2020 before an updated version with additional content was released in 2021 with a port to PC dropping six months later. Since that title also carried timed exclusivity it was assumed an Xbox port might be released around the time of a PC drop, though this never came to fruition. It was never stated at the time if a potential deal to keep this title exclusive longer or permanent was made.
In the article by the Washington Post, it was stated that “Securing the Final Fantasy 7 trilogy as a console exclusive is a feather in the PlayStation cap,” Christian Svensson, vice president of second and third-party content ventures and strategic initiatives at Sony Interactive Entertainment. He additionally stated that this exclusivity was mutually desired by both Sony and Square Enix as early as the initial planning stages of the first in the trilogy.
He added to this relationship by stating:
Back in that same console generation for the original PlayStation, Sony Computer Entertainment had few franchises of its own, and in order to find its place in a very competitive video game industry, we sought to win the hearts and minds of key third-party developers like Square.
Final Fantasy has always been one of the primary franchise pillars on PlayStation consoles. Square Enix is one of the best in the business at pushing beyond their fans’ lofty expectations and showing off what can be done with PlayStation hardware.
Last year Square Enix announced that their extremely popular MMO Final Fantasy XIV would be coming to Xbox, a major announcement given how close Square and Sony had been, with XVI being a major console exclusive for the studios. As part of this announcement, it was stated that Xbox and Square Enix planned to work closer, assumably meaning that Xbox would be getting more titles from the studio having been skipped by a majority of Square Enix’s most recent releases such as Final Fantasy XVI.
According to this, despite this announcement, Xbox is set to miss out on the incredibly well-reviewed Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and its planned sequel. As of this moment Octopath Traveller II, Visions of Mana, and Final Fantasy XIV are the only Square Enix titles planned for release on an Xbox Console. However, with Kingdom Hearts IV and Dragon Quest XII in development and having made the jump before, there could be a lot to look forward to on either platform.
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