Many are expecting, given how generational transitions usually go, that the next few years will see quite a few developers straddling the line between current and next-gen consoles with their new releases. Microsoft themselves have confirmed that they won’t be making any Xbox Series X exclusive games for a while, and features such as the newly announced Smart Delivery only reinforce that idea.
It’s safe to assume that most of the bigger publishers in the industry will be reluctant to just let the massive install base of current gen consoles go, and will as such be making cross-gen games for at least a couple of years. One such publisher is Square Enix.
Speaking during an investors Q&A earlier this month, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda confirmed that for the foreseeable future, all games coming from the publishers will be on both, current and next-gen consoles, and that next-gen exclusives will be “farther down the road.”
“The next-generation consoles will have backward compatibility, so we plan for the time being to make our new titles available for both current and next-generation consoles.” said Matsuda. “It will therefore be somewhat farther down the road that we release titles exclusively for the next-generation consoles. ”
It’ll be interesting to see what the release timeline of Square Enix’s upcoming projects is, of which there seem to be quite a few. Outiders, due out later this year, has already been confirmed to be a cross-gen game. Quite a few other games are also already confirmed to be in development, from Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s second part to Dragon Quest 12 to the next Kingdom Hearts title.
Meanwhile, several other titles are also in the works that we know very little about right now, including a new game from the Dragon Quest Builders team, the next game from Luminous Productions, a project being headed up by Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida, and a next-gen action title.
