Why The Final Fantasy Games Were Never Released For Non-Sony Consoles

Final Fantasy games were never ported to any console other than Sony's, until recently and there's a long history to why the developers decided on that.

[Geobros]

If this is true we see the switch success and the xbox failure. As Square didnt want to release the games on xbox one.

[littletad]

Did you even read the article or are you just commenting out of thin air? Squaresoft had an exclusivity deal with Sony, prior to the merger. So the games didn't appear on any platform, including Nintendo.

[Geobros]

Did you read that in the story?
"Sony sold that share in 2014, but at the time the Wii U was the Wii U and the Xbox One was seemingly lost in the woods. The Switch was the first chance to do it."

[WilliamSheridan]

The real answer is Japanese are very loyal and have strong bias. They wouldn't buy American unless it was a very dominant choice. And even then....

[SuperSonic91]

It took a 100 million dollar deal from MS to steal FF XIII from Sony.
Tomb Raider reboot by SE cost MS 50 million dollar for one year time exclusivity.

[UltraNova]

Links...Proof?

[djl3485]

How is it stealing if FF XIII wasn't an exclusive?

[SuperSonic91]

@dj3485
SE themselves promised to Japanese gamers that FFXIII was exclusive to PS3 until MS made them break their word of honor.
Thus greatly pissing off the Japanese. Part of the deal was to launch 360 version simultaneously with PS3.
That was SEs fall from grace.

Look it up.

[ForeverTheGoat]

Provide links to back up your claim

[DOMination-]

Why would the Japanese care about the 360 anyway? Plus iirc the game remained exclusive to ps3 anyway in Japan

[Sirk7x]

Even if that were true, is that any better than SE, a third party company having an exclusivity deal with Sony in the first place? Pots and kettles man.

[FallenAngel1984]

“As theorised by many, Square was barred from publishing titles for consoles other than Sony’s PlayStation due to the exclusivity deal.”

Square Enix wanted to make games for the Game Boy Advance. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, still bitter that they abandoned their company after Final Fantasy VI to make games for Sony systems and a rival portable console, wouldn't let them. What was Squeenix to do? Create a special development contract that required them to create at least one GameCube game with a certain amount of sales profit going directly to Nintendo before being allowed to develop on the GBA. And the name of that GameCube-specific title was Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. After and Sword of Mana, you saw more titles hit the GBA. GCN wasn’t as successful in Japan so they saw little point in releasing other games for the platform.

Square Enix also released a lot of titles on DS, Xbox 360 and Wii during the next gen. They seemed capable of putting any of their games on any platform of their choice.

[lptmg]

Wonderswan yo

[TheColbertinator]

Yup still got FF4 on my Wonderswan color and FFVII on PC

[PhoenixUp]

I simply see it as the same reason why it took Square Enix to put The Last Remnant on a PlayStation console after a decade, they just simply didn’t get around to it prior

[neutralgamer1992]

Playstation is a world wide brand and sells well in every region simple as that. Squaresoft had a exclusive deal with sony but even if the did ps 1-2 were very successful so it made sense business wise to release on a console with the biggest install base

But going to other platforms after a while made sense too so more gamers get to play the games

[Platformgamer]

when the enix fused with squaresoft, the decline begun

[Razmiran]

Its unrelated
Dragon quest hasnt seen a decline in quality

[Platformgamer]

i was talking about final fantasy in particular actually, dragon quest XI is a masterpiece that prove your point a little

[rob-GP]

I'm sorry but without any proof or hard evidence, this theory fro the Eurogamer staff (and now this site) is pointless and sounds very made up and plucked out of thin air.

They are saying that no FF game appeared on any other console before 2014 - do people for get about FF on Gamecube, NDS, 3DS, iOS and Android (phones but still got new games), PC (new platform for the old games), etc...

Maybe the lacklustre Xbox 360 sales of the older titles, or maybe SE didn't see the need to put them on another console was something to do with it? Unless the devs actually say something, I probably wont believe any of these 'theories'.

[rainslacker]

There was an interview about the publishing of ff7 back in the print magazine age. I want to say egm, but could have been another one.

Anyhow, it was stated during that interview that Sony had console publishing rights to ff7, however I don't know if that was extended to other ff games. I just thought SE avoided other consoles because Nintendo stuck with carts, and after that the other consoles didn't sell as much to warrant putting their games on there. This changed last gen, and we see these games on other consoles now, and is imagine that se either brought out the contract for ff7(and maybe others), or the cream had an expiration period.

[DarkKaine]

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has sold off its entire stake in video game publisher Square Enix.

The company unloaded 9.52 million shares of the Final Fantasy maker, in a deal totaling ¥15.3 billion—or $150 million.

2014.

This is why you're getting FF games now.

[Pedantic91]

Nice journalistic work you got there....

A shame you would base it off a couple of theorizing tweets all the while ignoring the fact that FF titles have appeared on platforms outside of Sony for quite a while now.

[Sevir]

In 2006 Square announced FF13 and Versus 13... In April 2008 MS teased that they have an Earth shattering E3 announcement, at E3 that year, news came from MS's E3 that FF13 was coming to XB360, and that was after FF11 Online came to 360 as a launch title

[shaun mcwayne]

Any word on why ff viii isn't on the list of games being re released.

[Sirk7x]

I am also disappointed; I love that game and would buy it just to support even though I've played it a million times and could easily emulate.

[mastershredder]

I recall a time when everyone knew this. Now it's news topic?

[MasterChief3624]

But... the first 6 games were released for Nintendo consoles... and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance came out on the Game Boy Advance. And Crystal Chronicles was on Gamecube. And there are so many more examples. Misleading headline.

[Pekka]

Headline is just a clickbait because headline is actually a lie. There have been a lot of FF games on other consoles as other have pointed out.

[Drithe]

Tifa has nice boobies.

[wheresmymonkey]

Yeah, there's never been a Final Fantasy on anything other than a Sony machine. Apart from the first 6 entries in the main series all being Nintendo exclusives. Final Fantasy VII was originally going to be on the N64 before Square decided to move it to the PS1 thanks to some wheeling and dealing on Sony's part and Nintendo's insane decision to not have a CD drive in the machine.

Just because you aren't old enough to remember something doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[kevnb]

Even then, ffvii was ported to pc not that long after release.

[Sirk7x]

It definitely didn't go along with how the industry was moving, but there were advantages to cartridges. Games like Ocarina of Time and Banjo Kazooie would have never happened on optical storage.

[kevnb]

There has always been ports of final fantasy games, handheld and pc versions count too.

[nibblo]

TLDR; It is because that until 2014 Sony was a shareholder in Square and told them not to release it on competitor consoles.

[JunMei]

What are they talking about? They used to be exclusively Nintendo.