With the highly anticipated action RPG Kingdom Hearts 3 releasing worldwide last month, many fans are ecstatic to finally have the game in their hands. The sequel had bit of a rocky development period and to make matters even more controversial, the game was almost entirely leaked just a month shy of its official release.
Despite this, popular news sites dedicated to the series as well as many members of the Kingdom Hearts community took precautions not to spread spoiler material. In an immediate response to the situation, Square Enix made an announcement that they withheld the epilogue as well as the secret movie from the physical copy because they were the biggest spoilers within the game. However, within an interview with Famitsu, Kingdom Hearts 3’s director Tetsuya Nomura stated that due to the leaks he “can’t help but reconsider what I’ll do for my next games, including simultaneous worldwide releases of physical copies at the very least.”
In the past, Kingdom Hearts titles have usually released first in Japan and then, sometime later, they make their way to the rest world. These gaps in releases have been as far as months apart, but due to the attention that Kingdom Hearts 3 was receiving, Square Enix decided to make the release gap between the Japanese and English versions this time around a mere 4 days.
Due to a few physical copies of the English version being released to the public without the discretion of Square Enix, it looks like for the future of the series, we may not be getting the game (at least the physical copy) so close to the Japanese release. This could be upsetting to fans who try to avoid spoilers until they can get their hands in the localized copy. We will just have to wait and see how the developer chooses to handle future release regarding the beloved series.