Revealed during the Final Fantasy 16 pre-launch celebration, both PlatinumGames and the Kingdom Hearts dev team have been confirmed to lend a hand in developing Final Fantasy 16.
A message was shared from each team, which can be found below.
Hi, I’m Atsushi Inaba, President and CEO of PlatinumGames Inc. The release date for FINAL FANTASY XVI is finally around the corner. PlatinumGames was graced with the opportunity to develop a part of FINAL FANTASY XVI.
We’d never had an experience to work on a title in this manner, so it certainly took us by surprise when we were first approached. But the development staff–myself included, were all extremely excited for this opportunity, saying things like, “it’s the FINAL FANTASY” and “we’ll never get another chance to work on FINAL FANTASY.”
So we gladly accepted this opportunity and made it happen.
Takahisa Taura, who worked with Square Enix previously on NieR: Automata, led the development staff and the team on the PlatinumGames side. He powered through the development as leader of the team, and I’m confident that the part we handled ended up being a high quality content.
We are able to work on FINAL FANTASY XVI with excitement as creators, but we only partially handled the development, so we’re also looking forward to playing the content as individual fans, just like those that are watching this video. And so, I am looking forward to enjoying the fantastic world of FINAL FANTASY XVI as both a creator and a fan.
Our sincerest congratulations!
The Kingdom Hearts IV Team:
Hello everyone! I’m Tai Yasue, Co-Director of KINGDOM HEARTS IV.
I’m happy to announce that, in fact the KINGDOM HEARTS development team had a part in developing FINAL FANTASY XVI! We joined forces on the battles and such, but to be honest, it came as a surprise when the idea was initially brought to us. It seemed like a daring idea!
It’s already hard to achieve a scale of this level while being an action-based game. And, it felt even crazier hearing their plan to join forces with development teams that each have different creative methods.
I mean, even if it’s coming from Naoki Yoshida, the man with an asteroid named after him, we were thinking about politely declining…
That being said, as we got to know more about the game’s plan and story, the entire team wanted to make this work, no matter what.
Although it was a wild undertaking, there was ultimately something to gain through its development. Now, FINAL FANTASY XVI’s release is right around the corner. In a sense, it’s been developed in an unconventional way, but in part, because of that, we feel it’s shaped up to deliver an exceptional experience, so please give it a go! Thank you!
Naoki Yoshida added afterward that since the production scale of FF16 was so massive, and it first time the studio trying to create this full real-time action game, they needed help and reached out to both PlatinumGames and Kingdom Hearts dev teams, seeing that they were well versed in creating action types of games. He said both teams were reluctant to help at first but then came on board after learning more about the title and had gone “all out” on their support. He says that the scale of Final Fantasy 16 could not have been achieved without the help of either studio.
Final Fantasy 16 is launching June 22, exclusively for the PS5. For those interested in trying out the game before release, a demo will be available on June 12. Details can be found here: Final Fantasy 16 Demo Announced, Available June 12; Includes Special Battle Demo