Final Fantasy 7 Revelation marks a significant first for the remake series: it’ll be the only entry available across multiple platforms on launch day. Remake and Rebirth both released as PlayStation exclusives, and took years to hit PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, but Revelation will be available for all players on day one. The change in approach, director Naoki Hamaguchi says, is simply a response to the reality of today’s gaming landscape.
The multiplatform release is “an inevitable outcome of the changing environment surrounding today’s players,” as Hamaguchi explains in Edge Magazine issue #429. Now, players “are no longer tied to a single piece of hardware,” and enjoy their games on TVs, desktops, and handheld devices alike.
“I believe that what will be important in future triple-A game development is not how high-performance an environment we can use,” Hamaguchi says, “but rather how widely we can deliver the core of the same experience across different environments.” In other words, game devs are now incentivized to make sure their games scale across a wide range of platforms, from the highest-end PCs to the most lowly handhelds.
Square Enix announced its intention to “aggressively” pursue a “multiplatform strategy” back in 2024. The publisher had never truly been exclusive to one particular platform, though its allegiance shifts between Nintendo and Sony in the ’90s are the stuff of game history legend. Nevertheless, almost all of its games have been released across all major platforms in the past few years – an unequivocal win for all but the most hardened of console warriors.