Key members of the Final Fantasy team have come together to post a heartfelt New Year’s message to fans, including a gorgeous new artwork from Rokumo Saito of the Final Fantasy XIV art team.
In the blog post, Yoshinori Kitase and Naoki Yoshida speak about the progress of their upcoming projects, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI respectively, and Kei Hirono and Ichiro Hazama also give updates on Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and Theatrhythm Final Bar Line.
While most of the updates are to be expected – namely that development on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is coming along and that Theatrhythm Final Bar Line and Final Fantasy XVI are on track to meet their respective release dates of February 16, 2023 and June 22, 2023 – another small detail in the post should have fans excitedly speculating.
After assuring fans that there’ll be more to share about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth soon, Kitase-san in his address reveals that there is “another big announcement unrelated to FFVII” to come, and that the team is working to make 2023 the most exciting year yet.
Savvy fans will no doubt recall that a potential remake of Final Fantasy IX was named in the huge NVIDIA GeForce Now leak of 2021, a list of unannounced new games and ports that has mostly proven to be very accurate, meaning there’s a surprisingly high chance that this is exactly what Yoshinori Kitase is referring to here.
Only time will tell what it amounts to, but at any rate Final Fantasy fans have a lot to look forward to in the year ahead.
