Remaining Fantasy faces no “existential threat” regardless of lower-than-hoped PS5 gross sales, says FF16 director

Please lock your Chocobos to assault place and set your Phoenix Downs to stun: Sq. Enix have launched contemporary particulars of Remaining Fantasy 16’s PC port, which has now been dated for launch on seventeenth September. They’ve additionally shared a little bit about why it is taken so lengthy to reach – the (usually respectable) action-RPG hit PS5 over a yr in the past, again once I was nonetheless some filthy console-playing freelancer.

Based on director Hiroshi Takai, it was “not possible” to create the PC and PS5 variations on the identical time, even when Sq. Enix hadn’t been restrained by a timed exclusivity clause. He additionally thinks that the Remaining Fantasy collection faces no “existential threat” proper now, regardless of lower-than-hoped returns from each Remaining Fantasy 16 and, going by Sq. Enix’s newest monetary stories, the more moderen and at the moment PS5-only Remaining Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Remaining Fantasy has a monitor report for displaying up fashionably late on PC – it took Remaining Fantasy 7 Remake, first of the FF7 reboots, nicely over a yr to land on Epic Video games Retailer following its PS4 launch. As regards Remaining Fantasy 16 particularly, Sq. Enix needed to work round a six month exclusivity cope with Sony and PS5 following the preliminary launch in June 2023. Producer Naoki Yoshida has additionally indulged in a contact of bait-and-switch with journalists, jocularly denying that Sq. Enix had ever introduced the sport for PC at one level. I think the uneven communication there has much less to do with trolling than with the unpredictable nature of recreation growth.

“The explanations range for every title, however within the case of FFXVI, it primarily comes all the way down to the unique recreation being tailor-made for the PS5 in lots of other ways, and it was not possible to do that similtaneously all of the optimization work that was wanted for the PC model,” Takai instructed me over electronic mail, once I requested why this and different Remaining Fantasy video games are inclined to arrive in a while PC. He was unable to inform me something in regards to the specifics of the PC model’s growth, aside from that this is similar crew who made the unique PS5 model.

So what do PC Remaining Fantasisers get for his or her endurance? For starters, the port will accompany a Full Version which incorporates two DLC packs, Echoes Of The Fallen and The Rising Tide. I have not performed both of these, however they appear fairly juicy. Echoes Of The Fallen’s choices embody a brand new remaining dungeon, whereas Rising Tide packs a brand new area, an endgame mode and new talents for this iteration’s protagonist Clive Rosefield – “Satan Could Clive”, as I boisterously name him down the pub, forgetting that each one my pals received sick of that joke over Xmas.

Sq. Enix have additionally added a bunch of latest graphics and efficiency settings, as you’d count on. “Since PC avid gamers all have completely different PCs with completely different specs, we have offered intensive configuration choices to maximise flexibility,” Takai instructed me. “We have elevated the body fee cap to 240fps, and you’ll select from numerous upscaling applied sciences corresponding to NVIDIA DLSS3, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS.”

Argh, so many letters and numbers! The place is {hardware} editor James to translate? Oh dang, I believe he is gone to Gamescom. I really feel like Remaining Fantasy video games ought to have their very own bespoke jargon for graphics options, mixing third-party terminology with the collection personal naming conventions. Any PC RPG can boast of supporting upscaling, however solely a Remaining Fantasy recreation might get away with e.g. Fabula Nova CrystaLSSIII or AMD Fenrir Shiva Ragnarok.

Sq. Enix have made an enormous noise about pushing past console currently. In Could this yr, the publishers promised “aggressive” enlargement to different platforms, maybe in mild of the truth that FF16 didn’t meet the corporate’s expectations on PS5. They stated they wished to “win over PC customers” particularly. With that in thoughts, I requested Takai whether or not Sq. Enix feels the viewers for Remaining Fantasy video games differs a lot between console and PC. “That is a troublesome query!” he stated, earlier than continuing to reply it very straightforwardly.

“Truthfully, there’s not a lot distinction between enjoying video games on PC and consoles as of late, so I do not know if there’s any actual distinction relating to FF followers,” Takai commented. “Nonetheless, extra individuals have entry to a PC, so I am hoping we will get the sport into the arms of a broader viewers of avid gamers with the PC model.”

The corporate have but to share gross sales of Remaining Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which launched on PS5 in February, however they’ve reported a year-on-year total recreation gross sales drop, offset by comparatively regular returns from subscription-based MMO Remaining Fantasy 14. All this however, Takai does not assume the Remaining Fantasy collection has turn out to be unsustainable and in want of a basic rethink, not least as a result of Sq. Enix are all the time rethinking it.

“Whereas it is all the time vital to steadiness growth prices with gross sales, I do not assume there’s any form of existential threat for the collection,” he instructed me. “As builders, we simply must preserve creating what we predict is enjoyable – and if gamers assume to themselves, ‘they went in a brand new course this time, however it was nonetheless enjoyable’, then possibly that is all of the dramatic change we want.”

If you happen to’re interested by FF16 on PC, I’ve saved one of the best for final: there’s now a demo on Steam and the Epic Video games Retailer.