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Square Enix’s Yoshinori Kitase, who directed 1997’s Final Fantasy VII, has revealed that he didn’t really know how popular the game was outside Japan until five years later.
Over on the PlayStation Blog, Kitase reminisced about the original Final Fantasy VII‘s development and release, and stated that while sales data suggested it was doing well, he didn’t realize the extent of its popularity until 2002 when he went on a Final Fantasy X promotional tour to Europe and North America.
“From the sales data, I could see it was selling well to people all over the world – but back then we didn’t really have the opportunity to interact with our global fans, so I didn’t really have a sense of just how well-received it was,” Kitase wrote. “I only really understood five years later in 2002, when we released Final Fantasy X on PlayStation 2. I went on a promotional tour of Europe and North America for the first time – it was the first chance I’d ever had to meet with international fans and many of them brought their copies of Final Fantasy VII for me to sign. That’s when I really felt the level of our success for the first time – it was very memorable to say the least.”
Kitase also said that the team was only able to ship Final Fantasy VII with “a large volume of movie cutscenes” due to the memory that CD ROMs had to offer at the time.
You can now play the PlayStation 4 port of the original Final Fantasy VII via PlayStation Now.
[Source: PS Blog]