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Update: The Washington Post has since altered its article to clarify that Sony never said the full trilogy was console-exclusive to PlayStation. However, Remake and Rebirth will remain console-exclusive for now. We have updated our article to reflect this.
Original Story:
The first two games in the Final Fantasy VII trilogy are unlikely to make their way to Xbox consoles.
It has emerged that Sony made a deal with Square Enix for Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to be PlayStation console exclusives. The reason for this agreement was that the Final Fantasy franchise — and the original Final Fantasy VII game itself — was one of the primary pillars on PlayStation consoles.
Square Enix also wanted Final Fantasy VII to be exclusive to PlayStation
Sony Interactive Entertainment’s vice president of second- and third-party content ventures and strategic initiatives, Christian Svensson, said that console exclusivity was mutually desired by Sony and Square Enix when the Final Fantasy VII trilogy began development.
However, the two companies had different reasons for the agreement. Svensson told The Washington Post that Sony wanted to relive the game’s importance on modern-day consoles.
During the original PlayStation days, Sony had few franchises of its own, so it “sought to win the hearts and minds of key third-party developers like Square.” This attitude to third-party partnerships is “ingrained in our DNA to this day […] and connects directly to how we’ve worked together on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.”
Bearing in mind Sony has already said it won’t be releasing any new major existing franchise titles before April 2025, Rebirth will be one of the main games aiming to fill that void.
Meanwhile, Square Enix felt that Rebirth’s fantasy world would not have been possible had the game been developed for multiple platforms. Final Fantasy franchise producer Yoshinori Kitase said that “had it not been on a single platform, the world map would not be seamless, and game design may have had to regress significantly.”
A single platform allowed the team to focus on the game’s design rather than on porting it to different consoles. This meant that Rebirth’s world is filled with different activities, diverse landscapes, and a whole host of different characters.
Now development is moving on to the third part of the trilogy and the team has already made progress on the script. With any luck, the game will be out by 2028, but whether that’s on PS5 and/or a new generation on PlayStation consoles remains to be seen.