Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s director wants his games to be ported to Xbox – Hopefully it’ll happen

The original Final Fantasy VII was such a revolutionary game, that the Final Fantasy IP indirectly became one of the PlayStation brand’s biggest franchises. This was reflected by the fact that both Final Fantasy VII Remake and its sequel, Rebirth, initially came out exclusively on PS4 and PS5, respectively.

Naoki Hamaguchi owns an Xbox, even if his games are PS5 exclusives

There are many people who believe it’s time for this PlayStation exclusivity to end, and one of them is none other than Naoki Hamaguchi, the director of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. In an interview with GamesRadar at the 2024 Golden Joystick Awards, Hamaguchi revealed that he actually owns an Xbox: “This is just a personal opinion now, but I’ve got an Xbox myself. I think it’s a great hardware platform. I do like Xbox”, said the famous director.

This is a big surprise, due to the Final Fantasy franchise’s long-running relationship with the PlayStation brand, but it’s evident that both Hamaguchi and Square Enix want to go multiplatform in the near future. While he didn’t reveal anything specific, he also said “I do want to bring Final Fantasy 7 and the Remake series to as many players out there as possible, so we want to create that situation, that environment, where more players can play the games in the future, and we want to look in that direction”.

However, this didn’t come out of nowhere. Earlier this year, Square Enix revealed its new plans to shift into a new strategy and release more and more multiplatform titles, especially after some of its PlayStation 5 exclusives, like Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, didn’t meet the company’s exceedingly high sales expectations. According to Hamaguchi, it’s not just Square Enix that is changing, but the entire industry: “I think certainly we’re feeling right now that the industry has changed in terms of there being so many different platforms and environments that people play games on these days”.

Final Fantasy VII marked a huge shift in the franchise’s console exclusivity

Naoki Hamaguchi’s claims about the Xbox and his desire to port his games to PlayStation’s main competitor are fascinating, especially when we take into consideration the odd and convoluted history of the Final Fantasy IP with home console exclusivity. After all, this franchise got its start on the Nintendo Entertainment System and was synonymous with that company for multiple years, with Squaresoft releasing high-quality JRPGs on NES, SNES, and Game Boy all throughout the 80s and 90s.

However, everything changed when Nintendo made the jump to 3D. The limited space of the Nintendo 64 cartridge and the lower manufacturing cost of CD-ROMs forced Squaresoft to shift development of Final Fantasy VII to the original PlayStation instead. This helped the game become one of the console’s biggest system sellers and cemented the PlayStation brand as the place for gamers to play JRPGs, especially those made by Squaresoft/Square Enix.

Every mainline Final Fantasy game (and even some related games, like Kingdom Hearts) eventually came out on PS1 and PS2. This, however, changed once again when Square Enix ported the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI to Xbox 360 in 2006, which later prompted it to release Final Fantasy XIII on Microsoft’s console on day one.

Ever since then, most mainline Final Fantasy games have made their way to Xbox consoles in one way or another, as Square Enix’s biggest franchise has ceased being a PlayStation exclusive for many years. Nevertheless, it’s evident that there’s still a close relationship between Square Enix and Sony, as Final Fantasy VII Remake Final Fantasy XVI were timed exclusives before Square ported it to other systems. Based on the company’s recent changes, it’s most likely that these timed exclusives are a thing of the past for Square Enix.