Please lock your Chocobos in attack stance and set your Phoenix Downs to stun stance: Square Enix has revealed new details on the PC port of Final Fantasy 16, which is now set to release on September 17. They also explained why it took so long to arrive – the (mostly decent) action RPG came to PS5 over a year ago, back when I was still a filthy indie console gamer.
According to director Hiroshi Takai, it was “impossible” to make the PC and PS5 versions at the same time, even if Square Enix hadn’t been constrained by a timed exclusivity clause. He also believes that the Final Fantasy series is not at “existential risk” at this point, despite below-expected returns for Final Fantasy 16 and, according to Square Enix’s latest financial reports, for the more recent Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which is currently reserved for the PS5.
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Final Fantasy has a history of appearing somewhat belatedly on PC: it took over a year for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the first of the FF7 reboots, to hit the Epic Games Store after its PS4 launch. When it came to Final Fantasy 16 in particular, Square Enix had to work around a six-month exclusivity deal with Sony and PS5 after its initial June 2023 release. Producer Naoki Yoshida also indulged in a bit of trickery with journalists, jokingly denying that Square Enix had ever announced the game for PC at any point. I suspect the patchy communication here has less to do with trolling and more to do with the unpredictable nature of game development.
“The reasons vary for each title, but in the case of FFXVI, it’s mainly because the original game was ported to the PS5 in so many different ways, and it was impossible to do that at the same time as all the optimization work that was needed for the PC version,” Takai told me via email when I asked him why this and other Final Fantasy games tend to come to PC later. He couldn’t tell me anything about the specifics of the PC version’s development, other than to say that it’s the same team that made the original PS5 version.
So what do Final Fantasisers PC players get for their patience? For starters, the port will come with a Complete Edition that includes two DLC packs, Echoes Of The Fallen and The Rising Tide. I haven't played either game, but they look pretty interesting. Echoes Of The Fallen's offerings include a new final dungeon, while Rising Tide features a new region, an endgame mode, and new abilities for this iteration's protagonist, Clive Rosefield—”Devil May Clive,” as I loudly call him in the pub, forgetting that all my friends were sick of this joke at Christmas.
Square Enix has also added a bunch of new graphics and performance settings, as you might expect. “Since PC gamers all have different PCs with different specifications, we’ve provided a lot of configuration options to maximize flexibility,” Takai told me. “We’ve increased the frame rate cap to 240fps, and you can choose from a variety of upscaling technologies like NVIDIA DLSS3, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS.”
Ugh, so many letters and numbers! Where is James the hardware editor translating? Oh dear, I think he went to Gamescom. I feel like Final Fantasy games should have their own bespoke lingo for graphics features, mixing third-party terminology with the series' own naming conventions. Any PC RPG can boast scaling support, but only a Final Fantasy game could pull it off with say Fabula Nova CrystaLSSIII or AMD Fenrir Shiva Ragnarok.
Square Enix has been making a lot of noise lately about its expansion beyond consoles. In May of this year, the publisher promised an “aggressive” expansion to other platforms, perhaps in light of FF16 failing to meet the company’s expectations on PS5. They stated that they wanted to “win over PC users” in particular. With that in mind, I asked Takai if Square Enix thought the audience for Final Fantasy games differed much between consoles and PC. “That’s a tough question!” he replied, before proceeding to give the very direct answer.
“Honestly, there isn’t much difference between playing games on PC and console these days, so I don’t know if there’s a real difference for FF fans,” Takai commented. “However, more and more people have access to a PC, so I hope we can get the game into the hands of a wider audience of gamers with the PC version.”
The company has yet to share sales figures for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which released on PS5 in February, but it reported an overall decline in sales for the game year-over-year, offset by relatively flat returns from subscription MMO Final Fantasy 14. Despite all of this, Takai doesn't believe the Final Fantasy series has become unsustainable and needs a fundamental overhaul, especially since Square Enix is always rethinking it.
“While it’s always important to balance development costs with sales, I don’t think there’s any existential risk to the series,” he told me. “As developers, we just have to keep making what we think is fun — and if players are thinking, ‘They took it in a different direction this time, but it was still fun,’ then maybe that’s all the radical change we need.”
If you're curious about FF16 on PC, I saved the best for last: there's now a demo on Steam and the Epic Games Store.