Square Enix has been showing off the latest build of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD behind closed doors at this year’s PAX expo, in Seattle.
A few interesting tidbits have come out of a preview done by IGN, in which they were told by director Hajime Tabata of the game’s current development progress. Apparently, the game “looked good and ran super smoothly”, and it’s roughly 80% percent done.
Tabata was being hounded for answers to various questions, like why the game made the jump from Playstation Vita to both current generation consoles, to which he replied with a desire to see the game on the big screen, and on new hardware.
During a following hands-off preview with Kotaku, Tabata also confirmed that Type-o would be finally arriving in the west sometime within the next year, meaning you’ll have it in your hands by sometime next August.
“We probably wouldn’t age another year until it’s released,” Tabata said. “We really do want the PS4 and Xbox One install base to grow in Japan as well, so we do want a release as quickly as possible.”
Curiously, the HD version of Type-o has been in development in secret since the middle of 2012, and that both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One ports will have no new content, aside from improved visuals, updated controls, and four difficulty options.
Tabata confirmed that Square Enix was originally planning on releasing a localized version on the PSP back in 2011, but the company decided on putting it on hold, as the PSP was starting to flounder outside of Japan.
In case you were worried the development of Final Fantasy Type-o would cause Final Fantasy XV to be delayed even further, Tabata said otherwise. To be clear, Final Fantasy XV was first revealed as Final Fantasy Versus XIII nearly a decade ago.
He claimed that Type-o is the game to get Final Fantasy enthusiasts’ feet wet, in being the first game on Playstation 4 and Xbox One:
“We do hope that it becomes the first basis for Final Fantasy XV when we release that globally.”
“The biggest reason was really the timing,” Tabata said. “After we released the Japanese version, and then it would go into localization, the US PSP market at the time was kinda shrinking. It wasn’t the best time for us to garner the best results, so that was the biggest reason we had to forgo the PSP version for the overseas market.”
So what do you guys think? Is it lame that Playstation Vita owners are getting shafted, or should we just be happy we’re getting the game officially localized?
