Turns out the rumors were true. Final Fantasy XVI was shown off during today’s PS5 showcase live stream. In fact, the 4-minute trailer for the game opened the entire show, the only game to be “captured on a PC emulating the PS5 experience.” While no release date was announced (let alone a window or year), XVI will be a PS5 console exclusive for a limited time after release, meaning it will come to PC and PS5 at launch and “other platforms” at some unspecified later date.
Get a look at the full Final Fantasy XVI trailer below:
Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida is producing the upcoming game, while Hiroshi Takai will direct. The trailer was both in-game battle gameplay and cutscenes running in realtime, hsowing just how far the team is on the game. Yoshida says the footage is just “a fraction of what the team has accomplished,” and they’ve grown from a few core members to a full-fledged unit working on polishing and building on what’s been created. He also says Final Fantasy XVI aims “to provide players an experience unmatched in terms of story and gameplay.”
Takai also comes from the online background, having worked on FF XI and FF XIV. Many players consider the MMO Final Fantasy XIV’s ongoing storylines to be one of the best in the series, so a single player game by people involved in XIV is an exciting prospect for XVI. Rest assured, they confirmed this is a single-player game. The trailer makes it clear that the “modern fantasy” setting of Final Fantasy XV is gone, replaced by what appears to be a much more classic Final Fantasy setting.
We won’t get any more information on Final Fantasy XVI until 2021, leaving us with just 4 minutes of footage to pore over and speculate on. It currently doesn’t have a release date, window, or year, which makes us think it’s a few years out at this point. Sony did give us the release date and price for the PS5 during the show though, so that can be forgiven.
