As spotted by Gematsu, the latest entry in the series by Square Enix received a 16+ rating, the equivalent of the ESRB’s M rating, due to violence, blood, intentional deaths, and victims suffering, among other things. The rating’s hardly surprising, considering what we have seen in the game’s trailers so far. Final Fantasy XVI’s release date is scheduled to be revealed before the end of the year, according to Naoki Yoshida. With only a month left in 2022, chances are high an announcement will come during The Game Awards 2022 show in ten days, on December 9th. I’m curious about the release date because it’s nearing completion. At the moment it’s set to be “Summer 2023”, but when do you think you’ll find out the specific release date? Yoshida : We plan to release the information again later this year, so I think we can say it at that time. I don’t think it’s going to be over the summer, so I think it’s okay (laughs). I’ve been used to the development environment for online games for the past few years, so I was a little surprised that I had to master it so quickly (bitter smile). If you think about producing physical discs, shipping them all over the world, and so on, it takes several months of physical time after mastering up. When I say that the development status is 90% and 50%, I think there will be voices saying “Please release it immediately”, but there are such circumstances… Final Fantasy XVI will launch on PlayStation 5 sometime during Summer 2023. It will be a PS5 console exclusive for six months.
