Final Fantasy 15 will be the first "major" game in the series to launch in all regions around the world at once, rather than going through months of soft releases, Square Enix revealed at Gamescom 2015.
During a panel where Square Enix also narrowed Final Fantasy 15's launch window, ever so slightly, Hajime Tabata, the game's director, coyly shared that the next installment in the long-standing fantasy series won't just release in Japan when its ready.
"This may be something that we are a 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," said Tabata. "So we didn't have the setup to deal with that, really."
The shift to support a worldwide launch took a bit of internal restructuring, said Tabata, and that reshuffling was Square's first major step in executing the project.
This latest bit of Final Fantasy 15 news slates the game at a worldwide release in 2016. About a week ago, Tabata put the Final Fantasy 15's launch inside 2016 when he told Gamespot the game would launch before 2017. Square should be ready to talk specifics around the end of this month, Tabata said.
"At the very least, I can tell you that it isn't going to be released this year," said Tabata. "I think we'll be able to tell you when we're making the announcement around PAX Prime, at the end of this month."
With the chance that there's still over a year's worth of development time left in the game, there could be plenty of time for Square to make significant changes to Final Fantasy 15. The studio is still listening to feedback, but Tabata said the team won't stray far from its core vision for the game.
"What we find the most important about this feedback is first of all to test the elements that we think are really good, to see if the emotional response to them is the reaction that we are looking for," said Tabata. "If it is, it's brilliant. But if it's not, we think: can we polish this to make sure it is?"
