Final Fantasy 15 Is Coming In 2016

In keeping with the tradition of today's marketing trends, Square Enix has announced the announcement date for the official release date for Final Fantasy XV. It's ridiculous, of course, but now gamers know that they can expect to get the official release date for Final Fantasy XV in March of 2016 and that the game will release in 2016.

The announcement will take place at a special event in March, according to a report from Game Informer. The announcement for the event that will officially reveal the release date took place during a PAX Prime panel over this past weekend.

This news follows on a rather slow stream of news for the game over the past couple of months. The only other thing that was unveiled for the game was a short cinematic that worked as a way to explain how Noctis and his crew ended up in the predicament they're in, and how their kingdom fell under some shady circumstances. Basically Noctis' father and the ruler over the kingdom was tricked into signing a peace treaty with an opposing empire, but after taking down the kingdom's defenses in order to invite the opposing leaders to the table, an entire armada was sent in to enact a hostile takeover on the kingdom.

This helps gives context to why Noctis appears as an exile of sorts and his journey to reclaim the throne. The demo for Final Fantasy XV helps explain a little bit of his predicament but it's mostly about showing off the game's impressive visuals and the all new combat system that Square Enix has built for the game. It's definitely a unique set of battle mechanics that comes awfully close to mimicking the sort of fight scenes you would find in an anime.

Square didn't really put a lot of attention on Final Fantasy XV at this past year's E3, which was mostly for hyping up Kingdom Hearts 3, Just Cause 3 and Rise Of The Tomb Raider. Square also took some time to pimp Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. To assuage Final Fantasy fans the company had updated the game's demo over this past summer. Whether or not that's enough to keep fans occupied until next year remains to be seen, but I wouldn't doubt it if we get a new promotional video come the Tokyo Game Show.

In fact a lot of gamers were actually caught off guard by Square dropping news about Final Fantasy XV at this year's PAX Prime, mainly because news this big is usually reserved for the Japanese-centric Tokyo Game Show. That's where most of the Japanese publishers make big announcements for games coming to the east or games designed for the niche Otaku audience. It's somewhat revelatory of the changing times that one of the last big Japanese publishers opted to announce the release window for one of the biggest games this generation at an American trade show event... in Seattle, Washington, no less.

One other thing that was guaranteed was that the game will be coming in 2016 for the Xbox One and PS4. The release date will be sometime before the year is out. If I had to hazard a guess I would assume Final Fantasy XV is further on than Kingdom Hearts 3 and that the former will likely get a late 2016 release while the latter may have a 2017 date. But who knows? Maybe both games will release in 2016. We'll surely find out when March arrives.