It’s been two years… is Final Fantasy VII Remake ever coming to Xbox?

Let’s break down some of the possible situations here, and see just how likely we think they might be…

Final Fantasy VII Remake was never planned for Xbox

The most obvious reason why two years have passed without so much as a mention of an Xbox release for FFVIIR could just be as simple as the game having never been scheduled for an Xbox version in the first place. In such instances, though, messaging around exclusivity is usually much clearer, especially in cases where Sony has directly contributed development funding (Street Fighter V, Demon’s Souls). The fact is that we’re two years on now and still nobody has properly ruled out an Xbox release, so I feel as though it’s pretty unlikely that Final Fantasy VII Remake was ever intended to be a full PlayStation exclusive — Sony would have been shouting it from the rooftops if that were the case. Instead, I feel what is more likely is…

Other platforms were planned for Final Fantasy VII Remake, but plans changed

It’s been a tumultuous few years and with so many moving parts on the production line, gaming has been hit especially hard by the ongoing global situation. We’ve seen countless delays and revised plans, so there’s a pretty good chance that FFVIIR would already be on Xbox in an alternate timeline not wracked by a pandemic, component shortages, and conflict. Not only that, but there have been numerous developments closer to home for the industry’s major players, with huge sums of money changing hands in a number of massive deals that would naturally have knock-on effects on any other arrangements that were already in place.

It could be, for instance, that Sony initially only intended to pay for a relatively short exclusivity window, but felt its hand was forced to extend the deal in light of Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda and later Activision Blizzard. Or it could be the other way around — perhaps the exclusivity window has come and gone, but either Square Enix itself isn’t too fussed about bringing the game to Xbox late, or MS has had its hands full with those massive deals and hasn’t had time to properly court Square and get FFVIIR on Xbox. All involved parties have been playing their Triple Triad cards so close to their chests with this one that they’re practically in their lungs, so it’s impossible to know for sure what the score is, though a timed exclusivity window long enough to outlast the buzz surrounding a game will effectively turn it into a de facto exclusive if either platform holder or publisher can’t see much value in a late arrival. Given the lack of clear communication, this situation seems fairly likely to me, although even the changing gaming landscape doesn’t write off a release down the line, of course.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2 has become the priority

This possibility ties into the previous one rather well, so it feels likely the natural topic to cover next. Final Fantasy VII Remake was years in the making, yet still only really covers the events of the first disc of the original three-disc PS1 game. Square Enix has made it clear it wants to retell the whole story so one or more follow-ups will be in the works, yet even with an engine and many character and enemy models done, breaking free of the walls of Midgar and into FFVII’s much wider world would be a massive undertaking even in a vacuum, let alone with the ongoing issues in the real world. It’s already going to be incredibly hard to avoid having this full saga straddle three console generations at this rate, so there’s a decent chance that Square is focusing its resources on the second game rather than ports of the first — a theory backed up somewhat by the sketchy nature of the PC release. Some believe that Square could be waiting on the next part (or even when the whole thing is done) before putting the first elsewhere, but it feels like that would be far too long to wait.

Once again, a change in priorities like this wouldn’t rule out a belated port of the original to other platforms at some point, though it would go some way towards explaining the lengthy delay. As such, I do think it’s likely that this is at very least a contributing factor to this hard-to-read situation — we’ve often heard Square Enix complain about games underperforming in their financial reports, from Tomb Raider to Avengers, so protracted development cycles aren’t going to help in that regard when the studio’s expectations seem rather lofty. On that note, I can’t see FFVIIR doing especially well on Xbox after all this time with a standard release, which might be another reason for the lack of communication — Xbox Game Pass gave Outriders a fighting chance previously, and got a lot more eyes on games like Guardians of the Galaxy, so maybe Square is just patiently waiting for MS to write it a cheque to put Remake on the service instead of potentially sending a two-year-old game out to die on new systems.

Final Fantasy VII Remake may still come to Xbox eventually

It’s been one hell of a waiting game already, but there’s nothing stopping Final Fantasy VII Remake from still coming to Xbox… though you do have to imagine it’d need to be sooner rather than later at this point in order to be viable. A surprise Game Pass arrival seems like the most likely way for this to happen now, and there’s clear precedent there — just about every major Final Fantasy game has come through the service at this point, while Square has previously arranged day-one drops (Outriders, Dragon Quest XI S) as well as plenty of latecomers to raise awareness (Hitman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Nier Automata, and more, not to mention the entire FF back catalogue) so there’s clearly a strong relationship there. As such, I would think it somewhat unlikely that Square would do a regular release of FFVIIR so long after the Highwind has sailed, but can certainly see it coming as a surprise Game Pass addition being somewhat likely if it ever does get the chance to break free of its weird exclusivity.

But what of other platforms? Well, the Kingdom Hearts games have been exclusive to the Epic Games Store for a year at this point, with a similar lack of communication as with FFVIIR about the possibility of other launchers such as Steam — it does feel like there’s some kind of deal in place there to have Square’s big games only on Epic’s store on PC, especially with the House of Unreal seemingly being no stranger to shelling out to keep games off Valve’s launcher. And Switch? Well, obviously FFVII Remake would be too much of a beast to run natively on Nintendo’s console, but with the rise of cloud streaming versions of games that would be beyond the technological capabilities of the system (including, once again, Square’s own Kingdom Hearts series), it’d certainly be possible to put the remake out that way should Square be interested in making it a full multiformat release. Or Square could make each chapter an exclusive on a different system to really set the Cait Sith among the chocobos, but that doesn’t sound particularly sensible or realistic…

Could Final Fantasy’s 35th anniversary hold the answer?