Final Fantasy Versus XIII was announced over seven years ago at Sony's E3 press conference in 2006, and since then a lot has changed. To keep up with the ever-changing industry, Square Enix decided to rename the game Final Fantasy XV and bring Tetsuya Nomura's chronically-delayed RPG to next-gen hardware.
In an interview with Famitsu, Nomura explained the reason behind this major change.
Around one or two years after we announced FF Versus 13, it was suggested to us to shift to FF15 as part of the company’s direction. By that time, a fair amount of time had already passed since the announcement and Versus was a well-known title, so it wasn’t a given that this would be 15; it could have still been Versus.
Personally, I came to accept the idea once FF Agito 13′s name was changed to Final Fantasy Type-0. As for the timing of the announcement, given that we were changing platforms as well, [the timing] wasn’t something we could decide on our own discretion. We worked together with assorted other divisions to get it announced at this E3.
Nomura then went on to explain why the company eventually decided to shift development to next-gen platforms rather than sticking with the PlayStation 3 hardware.
With current-gen systems, we couldn’t fully express what we wanted to do in this project. There were more and more things that we would’ve had to change the form of. However, the assumption was that we’d go ahead with a current-gen release, so went through a trial-and-error process to do as much as we could.
So we built an alpha version about a year ago, and the company response was ‘If you remained bound to the current generation, will it will be the product you envisioned?’ They suggested shifting fully to next-gen, and that was the spark that led to the move.
And so there you have it. The mysteries behind the long-delayed Final Fantasy Versus XIII XV have been revealed. Does Nomura's logic make sense to you? Are you glad the game has been moved to next-gen hardware? Let us know in the comments below.
[Via]
