While everyone is fighting over the current PS5 exclusivity around Final Fantasy XVI, it seems that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes with Sony and Square Enix than we thought. Gamers have accused Sony of simply throwing money at Square Enix in order to secure exclusivity for the upcoming RPG but the company actually had a major hand in the game’s development process.
The partnership was confirmed by Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida during an interview with 4Gamer. During the interview, Yoshida was asked what exactly the deal is with Sony and the PS5. He confirmed that there is definitely a timed exclusivity deal in place with Sony Interactive Entertainment. Square Enix cannot release other platform versions of Final Fantasy XVI for 6 months after the PS5 version is released.
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Yoshida then went on to discuss the sheer amount of technical support Sony provided during the development of Final Fantasy XVI. He says that the support from Sony from a development perspective is another huge factor as to why Square Enix signs contracts with the company.
During the development of Final Fantasy XVI, SIE engineers jumped on board to help with almost every aspect of the game’s technical development. Yoshida says the studio received “generous support in optimization that we could not manage on our own”.
However, outside of the extra engineers involved in the game’s development from Sony, Yoshida says that being able to focus on one platform while building the game, allowed Square Enix to invest more man-hours into things such as building the game and optimization.
Yoshida closes by stating that Sony provides not only extra engineering support on contracts but also promotional support from a global perspective.
So there you have it. It seems that Square Enix and Sony have been working like this for a while now. We don’t know how many other games the companies partnered up on from a development point of view but likely a lot.
We know that Square Enix is fully focused on the PS5 version of Final Fantasy XVI at the moment. The studio will only shift focus to the PC version after the release of the PS5 version in June. The game is also set to get a free demo closer to the launch later this year.
Source: 4Gamer
