Crisis Core Reunion couldn't be a cloud version because FF7 Remake fans have "higher expectations"

A Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion producer says FF7 Remake has raised fan's expectations for graphics so high that nothing less than a full remaster could meet them.

"If a game’s original hardware is no longer manufactured, it can be difficult to play the title. Crisis Core is an example of that," producer Yoshinori Kitase says in an official PlayStation Blog interview. "Of course, it would be possible to use cloud technology to play the game at its original specs, but the truth is that after Final Fantasy 7 Remake fans have higher expectations towards the graphics. So, I think that it’s definitely worthwhile remastering the game for current generation platforms in order to meet these expectations."

I'm not 100% clear on why Kitase is talking about cloud versions here. Crisis Core was originally a PSP game, and PSP titles have been well-emulated for years, even including a few titles in the PlayStation Plus classics catalog. A modern version of a PSP game wouldn't have to make use of the same cloud streaming solution as PS3 games on PS5 - it could just run locally through an emulator.

Either way, Kitase's saying that expectations for graphics post-FF7 Remake have gotten too high for fans to want to look at a PSP game on a big screen. "We originally considered porting the graphics unchanged, but there were a lot of things that we were concerned about when we first brought the original version onto a large screen," producer Mariko Sato adds.

The devs ultimately decided that they wanted to create a similar visual impression to the remake, and Kitase feels that Crisis Core Reunion has "achieved a graphical quality close" to what they were aiming for, "which makes it feel like a new, fresher, and more exciting game to play."

Find out why Crisis Core Reunion will be a must-play ahead of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.