Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi is an Xbox fan, and would love to see the PS5-exclusive RPG reach a wider audience someday.
Hamaguchi-san sat down with 12DOVE shortly before taking the stage with other 2024 Golden Joysticks Awards winners, as the game netted four of its six nominated categories. "In terms of Final Fantasy 7, there's nothing really we can say at the moment, but certainly I do want to bring Final Fantasy 7 and the Remake series to as many players out there as possible, " he hinted, "so we want to create that situation, that environment, where more players can play the games in future, and we want to look in that direction."
This comes just a handful of months after publisher Square Enix announced plans to bring some of its best JRPGs – in this case, Octopath Traveler – to a multiplatform audience. It makes the prospect of a multiplatform turn for the FF7 Remake trilogy not only that much more compelling, but potentially all the more likely.
According to Hamaguchi-san, Square Enix's interest in being more flexible with its platform exclusivity is an indicator of a broader, industry-wide shift. "I think this goes beyond Final Fantasy 7. It really is a change in the industry, and I think certainly we're feeling right now that the industry has changed in terms of there being so many different platforms and environments that people play games on these days," he says, reflecting on how once upon a time, publishers could "put out a game in one place and get most of the players coming to that game to play it [on that platform].
"It's so much more diversified now, so I think that's that's probably why our CEO, Mr. [Takashi] Kiryu, made that decision to move more in the direction of multiplatform – that's just the way that the industry is going." As for Hamaguchi-san's own take on the matter? "This is just a personal opinion now, but I've got an Xbox myself," he said enthusiastically. "I think it's a great hardware platform. I do like Xbox."
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