Rumors have circulated recently about PlayStation’s long standing exclusivity with PlayStation coming to an end and now director and executive officer at Square Enix, Naoki Yoshida, has now confirmed suspicions. Yoshida recently spoke in an interview with 4gamer.net about the plans for his company moving forward, stating:
This time, the Xbox Series X|S version will be released at the same time. In the future, Square Enix will release more and more titles simultaneously on each platform… so I hope Xbox users will play it, as well.
We have to think about how to get as many people as possible to play it, and how to make it viable from a business perspective.
Square Enix has had a fairly storied history with their exclusivity with PlayStation. Their connection stems all way back to 1997 with the beloved fan favorite Final Fantasy VII which saw (as of 2017) a sale of nearly 10 million copies and around $200 million in revenue. Critics also loved the game as Metacritic rated it a 92 and received the cites “Universal Acclaim” recognition. Since then, Square Enix and PlayStation have had a partnership that has seen great franchises like Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest. Yoshida would go on to say:
The fact that it is released simultaneously on such a platform has led to excitement. . .so we are grateful that they did a good job. We have to think about how to get as many people as possible to play it and how to make it viable from a business perspective.
Square Enix recently announced their first game that will be available on all platforms starting December 5th, is FANTASIAN Neo Dimension. The game will be a definitive edition of the JRPG that is set before Final Fantasy series that originally saw it’s release in 2021 in two separate parts that year.