Final Fantasy 14 may be one of the most popular MMORPGs of all time, and Final Fantasy 15 may have been an unqualified success, but the fact remains that the future of the franchise is a bit hazy for the time being.
Where does the series go from here? Will there be another big budget console RPG? Will it be in the style of Final Fantasy 15, 13, 12, or the older games? Will Square instead look at alternate solutions for Final Fantasy, such as episodic distribution or mobile games?
Square Enix’s Yoshinori Kitase, the current custodian of the series as a whole, spoke about where the future of the franchise may take it to Kotaku– noting an intriguing parallel that he wants drawn with mobile and smartphone games.
“When we release console games, it takes about 2-3 years to develop one title,” Kitase said “So when we want to incorporate user feedback that we received on our previous title, we have to wait 2-3 years to show that we have listened. But for the mobile title, we actually can update every month, and so we can incorporate user feedback really quickly. Being able to implement user feedback and get reactions keeps our motivation going.”
Does that mean, then, that Square might look into a games-as-a-service model for Final Fantasy 16? After all, 15 is already spearheading that initiative in a sense.
“How to do that with a console game is another question that I would have to think of, but I do want to try to be able to have that conversation and maybe somehow get feedback while developing a console game in the future,” he said.
All of this sounds most intriguing- and it will definitely be interesting to see what Square does going forward. Final Fantasy 15 is available now on PS4 and Xbox One, with a PC release coming early next year as well.
