Unsurprisingly, making a video game takes a long time. Every aspect of the massive worlds players can explore — games like Final Fantasy can take players over 50 hours to finish — must be created digitally. But even taking that process into account, over the past decade or so Square Enix's epic games have come to epitomize long, drawn-out development periods. The Tokyo-based game maker seems eager to change that perception for its upcoming title on the PlayStation 5, Final Fantasy XVI.
Games are often promoted as they are being made. The problem with revealing games too early in development is that certain ideas or features developers want to implement often change. This can also inadvertently mean that a game studio promises one thing, but delivers another. What’s more, the longer fans wait, the more the delay can build up outsized expectations.
For example, the previous installment in the franchise, Final Fantasy XV, took 10 years to release. The game started life as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which was announced along with Final Fantasy XIII in 2006. FFXIII also had a lengthy (though comparatively shorter) development period, and when it finally came out in December 2009, for some fans, the game didn't live up to expectations. It couldn't.