The Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival is still ongoing in Tokyo, and while its next expansion, Dawntrail, has received tons of new details, a release date isn’t one of them. Producer/director Naoki Yoshida explained why on the first day, confirming that there’s an internal date but that the team wants to ensure it’s as “fine-tuned” as possible before sharing.
“Given that this is…Fan Fest, you’re probably expecting us to announce the release date of Dawntrail,” he said (transcription via PC Gamer). “Unfortunately, though we do have an internal date that we are targeting, we are adjusting the schedule to ensure it’s fine-tuned as much as it possibly can be before announcing, so we will not be sharing that today.”
As for why the team is taking this approach, it’s to avoid another incident like Endwalker. The pivotal expansion was set to launch on November 23rd, 2021, but ended up delayed to December 7th.
“If you’re wondering why, well, it’s because, as you know, for Endwalker, for the very first time in my career, we had to delay the release. We don’t want that to happen again, even if it’s just a few weeks. So we are taking great care to make sure our schedule is on track before announcing, but we will get you that info as soon as we can.”
Yoshida also reaffirmed that it will launch this Summer, not the “Square Enix time” version of the same. “We said for [Final Fantasy] 16 we were gonna release it in Summer, and it came out in June. We will not be releasing on Square Enix time. We will be releasing on [Final Fantasy] 14 time, which means properly in Summer.” Of course, that could still fall anywhere between May 1st and September 23rd, depending on the season type.
Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail sees players venturing to Tural, a continent dubbed the New World, and utilizing new Jobs like the Viper and Pictomancer (the Beastmaster is due later). Check out the full trailer, and how the new areas and Dungeons look here.
