Square Enix announced today that a chibi version of the 2016 JRPG was headed to mobile devices. But the bigger news may well be that some version or another of the game is potentially coming to the Nintendo Switch.
Asked about Square’s plans for the game’s future during a Square Enix Gamescom stream, Final Fantasy XV Director Hajibe Tabata gave a not-so-subtle hint that the studio has at least thought about Nintendo’s console as a potential landing spot. “We can’t give you any complete, solid details right at the moment, but for our policy writers, we very much do want to move out and do as much as we can with the game, with the franchise,” he replied. “There’s another certain console out there people may be thinking of, sounds a little bit like you guys, your name, ‘Twitch.’ We’ll just leave it there.”
Almost immediately contradicting himself, however, Tabata did not, in fact, leave it there.
“Everyone on Final Fantasy XV, they love this specific console that sounds a lot like ‘Twitch’ — you may want to think something about that in the future,” he added.
As mentioned, this little nugget of information came shortly after Square’s announcement of Final Fantasy XV’s mobile spinoff, and the Switch is a hybrid home/mobile console that would not appear to have the computing power necessary to run the original version of Final Fantasy XV. Still, it’s unclear if Tabata was signaling that the Switch might get a graphically toned-down version of the original game, the chibi spinoff, or another version entirely.
Back in February, about a month before Nintendo launched the Switch, Tabata stated that Square had “no plans” to bring Final Fantasy XV to the console. He also said the studio was unsure whether or not Nintendo’s underpowered console could run the game. “It might run,” he said at the time. “But we haven’t conducted the proper tests on whether it would run properly on Switch or not, so I cannot say for sure.”
But Tabata couldn’t resist commenting on a potential Switch port again later that month. Speaking to Polygon, Tabata said at the time that while no work had begun on a potential Switch port, it was something that intrigued him. He then called Switch “a dream machine” and said there was much interest in it among his team.
“While I may not be working on anything for it at this point in time, a lot of people on the staff are really interested in the Switch,” he said. “Myself included! Many of the people on the dev team are older; they’re married; they have kids. One of the things they’d like to do is create something they could also play with their children, or that their children could play on their own, for example.”
Final Fantasy XV originally released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 29, 2016. Yesterday, Square announced a PC port would arrive in early 2018.
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