Final Fantasy 15 Director on PS4/Xbox One Upgrades, Possibility of PC Release

One of the biggest storylines of E3 2016 last week was new hardware. A day before the press conferences kicked off, Sony announced the Neo, while Microsoft used its briefing to debut Project Scorpio. Now, the director of Final Fantasy XV has weighed in with this thoughts on the systems, as well as the possibility of the long-in-development game coming to PC.

Speaking to Kotaku, Hajime Tabata said Microsoft did not brief him on Scorpio prior to the console's announcement. As such, Square Enix has not started working on anything for it. "I was there waiting in the green room [Tabata was on stage at Microsoft's briefing to talk about Final Fantasy XV] and I go 'Ooh wow, what's that?'" he explained.

Other developers behind big-name games got a rundown of Scorpio beforehand, as Todd Howard (Bethesda) and Patrick Soderlund (EA) were featured in the console's announcement video.

Tabata went on to say he's not ready to weigh in with his full thoughts on Scorpio, considering he hasn't worked with the system yet. However, based on some of the specs Microsoft talked about during the unveiling--including six teraflops of performance--Tabata said he believes Scorpio has "quite a lot of potential."

"It'd be really great though if we could have Final Fantasy XV something we can play on the current-generation Xbox One and PS4, also give them that choice that when the new, stronger-generation hardware comes out, to have them play at that level as well," he said. "I'd really like to be able give them that."

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To make the most out of Scorpio, which Microsoft calls the "most powerful console ever made," the company recommends using a 4K TV. Tabata said he doesn't have one right now.

Sony has been more tight-lipped about the Neo. After rumors and leaks, PlayStation executive Andrew House confirmed the console's existence in a media interview ahead of E3. However, Sony has yet to formally reveal the console and talk about its specs. According to a report from GameSpot sister site Giant Bomb, Neo features upgraded CPU, GPU, and RAM.

Scorpio goes on sale in holiday 2017, while Neo is reportedly due out this year. There is no word yet on pricing for either system, though it's expected they will cost more than existing hardware.

Another platform that Final Fantasy XV might be released for is the PC. While nothing is locked down yet, Tabata said Square Enix is "thinking about a PC version." As he's said before, fans should not expect this version to launch alongside the console editions in September, if it happens at all.

"Until we've got the console versions finished, we really aren't gonna think anymore about that," he explained. "That really is our top priority and one thing we're not gonna bend on is getting those console versions finished on time. We don't want to be making excuses. We don't want to be having regrets. We want to get these out and done in time."

Finally, Tabata shared a status update on Final Fantasy XV, saying Square Enix is now spending its time polishing and optimizing, as well as tweaking the UI further. He also mentioned that it would be "quite easy" to chop off some pieces of Final Fantasy XV or scale the game back in some areas to speed up the polish and optimization processes--but Square Enix is unwilling to do this.

"We've been keeping some people waiting about ten years for this game now, so we really don't want to cut anything," he explained. "For example, we could take away the number of enemies who appear at once or cut down the number of effects on screen--it would be very easy to optimize it then, but we don't want to do that."

You can read the full Kotaku interview here.

In other news about Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix announced a version of the game for PlayStation VR at E3 2016 last week.