Final Fantasy 16’s PS5 exclusivity has been talked about quite a bit among the Final Fantasy community, and game producer Naoki Yoshida revealed that the reason behind it is a lot more than just your typical exclusivity deal. Sony apparently provided extensive support to Square Enix throughout the game’s development, particularly when it came to both optimization and promotional help.
- Related Reading: Final Fantasy 16 Has No Loading Screens, Will Feature 11 Hours of Cutscenes, PC Version Incoming “At Some Point”
Yoshi-P revealed the story behind FF16’s exclusivity with Sony in an interview with 4Gamer. Here’s the full question-and-answer, machine translated into English:
4Gamer: Regarding the PC version of FFXVI, Mr. Yoshida’s comment during the distribution became a hot topic, but please tell us again.
Yoshida: First of all, FFXVI cannot release other platforms for six months after the PS5 version is released due to a time-limited exclusive agreement with SIE. But I think many of you probably don’t know why we make these contracts.
4Gamer: From the player’s point of view, I think it’s probably because the hardware manufacturer sells its own hardware during the contract period.
Yoshida: Of course, I think there is such a sentiment on the part of hardware manufacturers. However, from our point of view, concluding such a contract with a hardware manufacturer is due to the fact that we receive technical support. This time, we are developing together with a group of SIE engineers who know the basics of hardware, and we have received generous support for optimization that we cannot easily do on our own. In addition, by not developing on the premise of multi-platform, man-hours can be invested in creation and optimization. In addition, we can work together on promotions such as “How much would this be if converted into money?” on a global basis. Technology and promotional support is something you want to receive if you can.
With FF16 apparently not running on Unreal Engine or Luminous Engine, Yoshi-P reveals that the game did receive optimization support from engineers at Sony who are familiar with the hardware. Alongside promotional support from Sony, Square Enix has received quite a bit of help from the Japanese tech giant. Hopefully, all this translates well in-game, and based on the previews so far, it looks like that’s the case.
This is gonna be interesting with the recent FTC ruling
Not really. The brain dead Xbot cucks who ache to suck off Phil will still cry that there is some conspiracy there and its just everyone keeping games off of Xbox and not that Xbox is incompetent, that the people who matter don’t care about welfarepass and have zero desire to see Microsoft gobble up the entire gaming industry because if you can’t beat em, buy em till every game everywhere is “published by MS games studios”
Alot of imbeciles don’t even know the difference between a top 3 massive multi-billion dollar game publisher and a studio
And there you have it. Why would Sony have to pay millions for a developer to NOT have to downgrade a game for series s? It will be the same with FFVII Remake Part 2, another GOTY contender. Devs will be lining up to not have to make their games for that console.
And 8 years later this still stands, Xbone will NEVER be getting FFVII Remake (just like you were told in 2015), just like series s will never be getting Part 2…….. and unfortunately series x too as a result.
And to Oblivious_Observer on N4G, over half way through development of Starfield, a garbage console like series s got forced into the mix…………….. and what do you know, delayed and troubled development inbound, the same as just about every new gen only game that Xbox announced in 2020 without a single screenshot to their names.
How is that for business as usual lol?
Lets see what comes out of that FTC ruling now that Sony has gotta provide documents etc
What it means is every other version will not be optimised so not worth buying on them. This is a pathetic way to run a business.