It's been pretty much a standing order that Final Fantasy games release in Japan first prior to coming to the west and North America. Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Returns launched in North America in February of last year but was initially released in Japan three months earlier in November of 2013. Final Fantasy X's Japanese release date was July of 2001 while North Americans had to wait until December of that year. As a result, it became big news when the game's Director Hajime Tabata indicated to Gamespot last week at Gamescom that Final Fantasy XV will be the first game in the franchise's history to launch simulataneously world wide.
While speaking to Gamespot, Tabata stated that "This may be something that we are little bit embarrassed to talk about, but really, this is the first time that we've done a packaged, standalone Final Fantasy game with a simultaneous global launch, so we didn't have the setup to deal with that, really. The first thing we had to do was rearrange our internal structure to create something that could do that. That was the first important work on the project."
It sounds easier than it really is, especially with Tabata's comment of rearranging their internal structure. The way Square Enix does business, their entire set up from computer systems, to translations of script, to coding, etc all had to be reworked in order to make this happen. Final Fantasy XV will definitely release in 2016 according to Tabata with the second part of the game's demo, Episode Duscae 2.0, due out later this year. It's something that Final Fantasy fans have been desiring for a while now and may very well be a reason for the game's initial delay from 2015 into 2016. This is pure speculation of course until Tabata clarifies, but a slight delay is always better to ensure quality especially when you are talking about a franchise as iconic as Final Fantasy. I'm looking at you Halo MCC.
Final Fantasy XV will release on both PS4 and Xbox One
