Final Fantasy XVI was a commercial failure. Square Enix’s franchise is no longer as popular as it was a few years ago, and its strategy of launching them as temporary exclusives on the PS5 isn’t helping the Japanese company improve that situation. Final Fantasy VII Remake, which is an episodic saga, is saved from burning, but it also arrives as a limited-time PlayStation exclusive.
The poor results compound the fallacy of the idea of launching such games as temporary exclusives on consoles, as Hiroshi Takai, director of Final Fantasy XVI, admitted in an interview. Takai said it’s likely that future installments of the franchise will be released simultaneously on PS5 and PC, but he commented that it would depend on each team in charge of each project and their policies.
Releasing a game on multiple platforms makes it available to more users, which leads to the ability to sell more games. Final Fantasy XVI was released in June 2023 on PS5, with the PC version coming out on September 17th, so the adaptation to this platform took just over a year.
Timed exclusives for this franchise on PlayStation usually last around a year, so the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth could arrive in the first quarter of 2025, since the PS5 version was released in February 2024.
There is still a third installment of Final Fantasy VII Remake coming in two or three years, which may be based on the graphics engine Unreal Engine 5. This installment will close the remake of the original trilogy that arrived on PS1 years ago
