Final Fantasy XVI - General News Thread

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Ikkin

Warrior of Light
Oct 30, 2016
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So it sounds like the rumours of FFXVI being at the PS5 reveal event were false afterall, many games media people like Imran Khan formerly of GameInformer, Jason Schreier and ZhugeEx/Daniel Ahmad have said that XVI was not ever meant to be shown to begin with. Imran Khan even said every rumour he heard about "XVI" is actually what was shown for Project Athia, which isn't XVI let alone a Final Fantasy.
What I want to know is... how the heck does this happen, when LumiPro has been swearing up and down that their next project is a new IP? XD Were their sources leaking little details -- like actors and writers -- while holding back the studio working on the project? And if not... how did the sources convince the insiders that the public info on LumiPro's project was untrue?

It seems like people without inside info have been piecing together the most likely scenario based on public statements and job announcements for years, while people with inside info were confused. So bizarre.
 

Bazztek

Keyblade Master
May 26, 2014
719
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What I want to know is... how the heck does this happen, when LumiPro has been swearing up and down that their next project is a new IP? XD Were their sources leaking little details -- like actors and writers -- while holding back the studio working on the project? And if not... how did the sources convince the insiders that the public info on LumiPro's project was untrue?

It seems like people without inside info have been piecing together the most likely scenario based on public statements and job announcements for years, while people with inside info were confused. So bizarre.
My guess is people were just told that a new "fantasy game by the FFXV devs" was coming and just some descriptions about it like there's a girl using magic and there's a dragon and some dog monsters, and some of the writers and actors involved or something, I hardly ever see the gaming media cover anything Luminous posts on their site like the various dev interviews they do or anything that isn't a trailer or tech video shown at an event, so a lot of them probably aren't even aware that the entire point of the studio is to make new IP's and probably just assumed it was FFXVI. I've already lost count how many times I've seen people say "i bet project athia will become FFXVI in 10 years hahaha" or similar sentiments, it just seems like the wider gaming community isn't aware of why Luminous Productions even exists to begin with.

I don't know how else "insiders" could assume Project Athia was FFXVI knowing it was coming from Luminous Productions if not just out of ignorance, the only other explanation is they didn't know Lumionus/FFXV team were making it and were just told a new Square Enix fantasy game that looks big budget or something was gonna be shown, and then assumed it was XVI.
 

Ikkin

Warrior of Light
Oct 30, 2016
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My guess is people were just told that a new "fantasy game by the FFXV devs" was coming and just some descriptions about it like there's a girl using magic and there's a dragon and some dog monsters, and some of the writers and actors involved or something, I hardly ever see the gaming media cover anything Luminous posts on their site like the various dev interviews they do or anything that isn't a trailer or tech video shown at an event, so a lot of them probably aren't even aware that the entire point of the studio is to make new IP's and probably just assumed it was FFXVI. I've already lost count how many times I've seen people say "i bet project athia will become FFXVI in 10 years hahaha" or similar sentiments, it just seems like the wider gaming community isn't aware of why Luminous Productions even exists to begin with.
I feel like the "i bet project athia will become FFXVI in 10 years hahaha" sentiment is based on a different sort of misconception -- it's not so much that the people who say it don't get the point of LumiPro, but rather that they're so committed to the idea that FFXV's development was ten years of constant disaster that they've saddled LumiPro with that game's entire history. Versus XIII was never meant to be a mainline FF but became one anyway in the course of its lengthy development, so of course Project Athia will turn into a FF game after a decade of development.

The "insiders," on the other hand, likely know that LumiPro is a very productive team and saw them as a solid choice for another FF because of it.

I don't know how else "insiders" could assume Project Athia was FFXVI knowing it was coming from Luminous Productions if not just out of ignorance, the only other explanation is they didn't know Lumionus/FFXV team were making it and were just told a new Square Enix fantasy game that looks big budget or something was gonna be shown, and then assumed it was XVI.
If they were told about a big budget Squenix game without being told who was making it, I wonder if there might have been a "planned leak" element to it. A new IP like Project Athia could very well benefit from FF fans hearing rumors that FFXVI could make an appearance... especially since Project Athia itself isn't much further outside of FF's wheelhouse than FFXV itself.
 
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Skye

Red Wings Commander
Sep 26, 2013
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The 7R team are also really slow, as is the KH3 team, especially compared to Lumionus Production/the FFXV devs who made much higher quality content in much shorter time, so I don't see FF7R Part 2 taking any less than 3 years to make, same for whatever the next console KH game is.
Most of your post makes sense, but I highly disagree with that statement. How do we know that Project Athia releasing next year or after? Project Athia hasn't even have the official name yet, so we're years ahead of release. Listen, I'm pretty sure Project Athia will be a great game without a doubt, but I don't see that the project coming in 3 years. We may never know tbh.
 
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Ikkin

Warrior of Light
Oct 30, 2016
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Most of your post makes sense, but I highly disagree with that statement. How do we know that Project Athia releasing next year or after? Project Athia hasn't even have the official name yet, so we're years ahead of release. Listen, I'm pretty sure Project Athia will be a great game without a doubt, but I don't see that the project coming in 3 years. We may never know tbh.
Wasn't Octopath Traveler announced as "Project Octopath Traveler" a year and a half before release?

I'm inclined to judge Project Athia on the footage shown rather than the title... and what was shown was roughly on par with the FFXV showings from 2014 (albeit running on PS5 dev kits rather than development PCs!).

As such, it seems reasonable to estimate that Project Athia is likely a Holiday 2022- Spring 2023 game.
 

Skye

Red Wings Commander
Sep 26, 2013
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Wasn't Octopath Traveler announced as "Project Octopath Traveler" a year and a half before release?

I'm inclined to judge Project Athia on the footage shown rather than the title... and what was shown was roughly on par with the FFXV showings from 2014 (albeit running on PS5 dev kits rather than development PCs!).

As such, it seems reasonable to estimate that Project Athia is likely a Holiday 2022- Spring 2023 game.
Project Octopath was not a big budget game, yes it took a year and a half for it to complete. I'm not expecting Project Athia to be completed in 10 years, that's too unrealistic (Unless they change the engine which I doubt it will happen) Holiday 2022 is pretty appropriate estimate, but 2024 is more realistic estimate in my opinion. Like I said, we may never know, predicting release dates for Square Enix game are pretty much unpredictable. Heck, we thought FFVIIR might be a next-gen game, yes Project Athia announced first but that doesn't mean that it will be released first and I'll say it again we may never know.
 
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Bazztek

Keyblade Master
May 26, 2014
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So SE just stated this in a Q&A session during a stockholders meeting held on June 24th.
Question: Normally, you would announce new games at E3, but how has coronavirus affected your plans this year?
Answer: We would normally announce new games at E3, yes. We had planned to have a press conference as a replacement event, but were unable to do so since assets were not complete. We’ll be announcing new titles individually as the timing permits. Several will debut around July to August.
https://www.gematsu.com/2020/06/squ...games-meant-for-e3-2020-around-july-to-august
http://blog.livedoor.jp/majo2/archives/52117280.html

Most of your post makes sense, but I highly disagree with that statement. How do we know that Project Athia releasing next year or after? Project Athia hasn't even have the official name yet, so we're years ahead of release. Listen, I'm pretty sure Project Athia will be a great game without a doubt, but I don't see that the project coming in 3 years. We may never know tbh.
I don't think having a name or not is indicative of anything, Nier Automata was announced without a final title yet, so was Octopath, even if both of those are lower budget games than what Project Athia is that doesn't really mean they can be made faster or not, take for example Persona 5, much lower budget compared to SE's AAA RPGs yet it still took 5 years for them to make.
Nier Automata's reveal trailer also didn't even show any gameplay, just some concept art for most of it with text, and then 10 seconds at the end of 2B landing on the ground, standing up and looking at the camera. In comparison we've seen gameplay footage for Project Athia in the reveal.

Given Athia has already been in development for 2 years right now, it could very well slide into 2021 or 2022, as a reminder in comparison the FFXV stuff we saw in 2013 was created in the span of 1 year from July 2012 to June 2013, they then essentially restarted all the asset creation from scratch as they started to migrate to Lumionus in July 2013 and the game came out 3 years later while they were making the engine alongside the game, from the point XV started from scratch on Luminous in July 2013 til it released in November 2016 it had been 3 years and 4 months, 2021-2022 for Athia is already 3-4 years of dev time which is about as much as FFXV earnestly got, so I think that a 2021-2022 launch for Project Athia is still pretty realistic to assume.

It's now been 3 years since XV released with the engine being even more polished since then, and Athia wouldn't have the same drawbacks than XV had in having to restart asset creation from scratch because of a generational shift, it's also not even know how big Athia will actually be, whether it's FFXV style massive or smaller more closer to Nier Automata's scale and more segmented areas. Given how efficient the Luminous team were on XV and have been since its very possible it could launch in either FY2021 (start of April 2021 - end of March 2022) or FY2022 (start of April 2021 - end of March 2023).

I wonder if there might have been a "planned leak" element to it.
I dunno, doesn't really feel like a planned leak kinda situation, like Imran Khan said people likely just got their wires crossed.
Btw the same link above saying they have announcements planned for July-August also had another question asking about stealth marketing and they answered saying they don't think stealth marketing is is a form of advertisement they wanna do nor have they received reports of it being implemented in anything they're doing, I think a "planned leak" would fall into what is considered "stealth marketing".
 
Oct 26, 2017
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Costa Rica
The info was verified by ResetEra mods. Looks like FFXVI is time exclusive on PS5.

This is the first (second, if you count Athia) in a series of very big Sony x Square Enix collaborations.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/co...ion-editions-of-avengers.261042/post-41499528

---

Yeah, Navtra was talking about FFXVI, he made a prediction post before the PlayStation june event.

- Ratchet & Clank launch title
- LBP spin off
- GT7
- Horizon 2 2021
- Spiderman 2 teaser
- Demon's Souls Remake
- Avengers exclusive DLC
- FFXVI
- SE New IP
https://www.resetera.com/threads/pl...-gaming-ot-v-has-come-to.223783/post-36499441
 
Oct 26, 2017
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More about the time exclusivity of FFXVI on PS5.

lol yeah. XVI is real. It was supposed to get announced in June's event. It's supposedly closer than most people would think. It has some kind of PS5 exclusivity (it was vague back then but it seems to be full timed exclusivity now). And I have no idea why they haven't announced it yet.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/pl...1-got-woke-records-broke.241384/post-41505735
 
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Bazztek

Keyblade Master
May 26, 2014
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If FFXVI does have some kind of PS5 timed exclusivity it doesn't really come as surprising to me because FF7R also had PlayStation timed exclusivity and Project Athia is PS5 timed console exclusive too. The most recent released and the most recent revealed AAA Square Enix JP games both have PlayStation timed console exclusivity so it seems like that's something they'll be doing going forward into 9th gen for their AAA games, and maybe even some of their mid tier and smaller games too.
 
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Bazztek

Keyblade Master
May 26, 2014
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PS5 Showcase broadcast will be happening on the 16th of September (which is 17th at 5am in Japan, 6am in Australia). I think this is a good a time as any for a possible FFXVI reveal, right before TGS too so if need be any follow up stuff could be revealed there. Even if all SE's current TGS plans have been publicly posted, it's not necessarily the case that they can't add more stuff even after all their "secret" things get added to their lineup, they've added things to their TGS lineup after already making public what their plans are many times in the past like they did at TGS 2014 with the FFXV stuff too.


Shinji Hashimoto also retweeted posts about the stream multiple times, he even made a post quote RT'ing the Japanese Playstation account with him saying "おーー!", but then quickly deleted it.
https://twitter.com/shinjihashimot3
 

T.O.T

Blitzball Champion
Feb 2, 2017
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I think this is a good a time as any for a possible FFXVI reveal, right before TGS too so if need be any follow up stuff could be revealed there. ]
Unless the game only has 2 years or less left on production I have to full on disagree with this. SE PR has had a history of revealing stuff far far too early. The last thing any logical person wants is another FFXV level PR disaster.
 

T.O.T

Blitzball Champion
Feb 2, 2017
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The last new mainline title revealed was Versus if you think about it. That's almost 15 years without the trill of a fully new title.

I can take a CG trailer at this point.
This is just a me thing probably, but I can't get excited about a reveal trailer for a game that isn't going to be coming out for another 4+ years. I can not get hyped for that. That seems to be a more common things these days.
 

Nova

Warrior of Light
Jul 14, 2015
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Unless the game only has 2 years or less left on production I have to full on disagree with this. SE PR has had a history of revealing stuff far far too early. The last thing any logical person wants is another FFXV level PR disaster.
I'm inclined to agree with this, I wouldn't mind more Athia footage or even an FFXV 4k remaster announcement (pls).

Though I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they pulled the trigger for XVI anyway.
 
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