After a large (and public) fan outcry over a poor Gamescom showing by Square Enix for Final Fantasy XV it seems that fan patience for the title that is the encapsulation of development hell is at an all time low. to address this Square Enix seems to have green-lighted director of Final Fantasy XV, Hajime Tabata, to partially reveal the release date and to reassure fans of the title and series that everything is going as scheduled.
This was done in several interviews with the more prominent members of the gaming media such as Gamespot and Eurogamer and it has revealed a few more things beyond the plans for release.
Here are some of the more crucial and interesting extracts from the various interviews:
“We can certainly say to people: it’s not going to be 2017. It’s going to be before that.”
“At the very least, I can tell you that it isn’t going to be released this year. I think we’ll be able to tell you when we’re making the announcement around PAX Prime, at the end of this month.”
“I understand why people are feeling that way after coming to Cologne and speaking to a lot of the media,”he said.“We really do get the feeling that people are a bit worried. Certainly, one thing I would like to say to them to reassure them, is that we’ve set down the release date, we know when it is, and we’ve got a complete road map lined up, right up to launch, and we’re proceeding along that as planned.”
“To give you a bit of background, when I took on responsibility for 15, what we wanted to achieve with Versus 13 wasn’t coming together so we had to change it. I was given a mission by the management, with what I had to achieve with this game. They said, ‘you’ve got this much budget, you have to have it out at this date,’ and that made us think how to make the best game we can with that. They won’t let me go over that!''
“I said to the management, that can compete in terms with the triple-A titles - they’re the parameters that I have,” Tabata pointed out. “It might be easy to misunderstand, and that I have limited conditions - it’s not like that at all. I made sure we had enough time, money and people to make it the kind of experience I want it to be. I’ve got everything I need to do the job.”
So there it is, it seems that Square Enix’s senior management is desperate to get this game out the door and has finally been putting its foot down with its own development teams when it comes to budgeting and release schedules. The wait is edging closer to the end. It remains to be seen if the game has the legs to keep or more importantly return the interest in the title prior to launch in 2016, whenever that may be.
