The Reason It Took So Long To Develop Final Fantasy XV

There is a reason why Final Fantasy XV has been a game ten years in the making. This is because so little work was done on Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

The game’s director, Hajime Tabata, revealed in a new interview with IGN that only around 20 or 25 percent of development had been done on Final Fantasy Versus XIII before becoming Final Fantasy XV.

Tabata went on to say that even the visuals and characters designs were all not fixed at that point in time. They had to go over and update or revise everything.

Final Fantasy XV didn’t really start getting developed fully until 2012 and then was revealed to the public at E3 2013. For five or six years, not a lot of progress was made to Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

Some parts of Versus XIII have been kept, while other parts have been changed entirely to fit the narrative of XV. They had a change in direction and some parts needed to be altered to fit this.

Tabata also mentioned the shift in console generation means there is a big difference to XV and Versus XIII. Versus XIII was going to be a PS3 exclusive, but now XV is being developed for the PS4 and Xbox One consoles. It’s possible the game could also be ported to the PC eventually.

Thankfully, Square Enix confirmed the game will be released in 2016 sometime. The official release date will finally be announced at a special event next March.