After its announcement in 2013, Kingdom Hearts III is finally going to be released in 2019. And while the E3 Final Fantasy VII Remake announcement was exciting, it looks like it’s not going to be released for a while. Is Square Enix just bad at planning? Or are they teasing fans on purpose?
According to Tetsuya Nomura, who is directing both projects simultaneously, the announcements were made early to avoid leaks.
“Deciding when to announce your game to the public is always difficult,” Nomura said to Italian Magazine Multiplayer (translated by Kingdom Hearts Insider). “I understand why some companies wait as long as possible, and I definitely think it’s a good thing for them.”
“But in our case, we receive pressure from the fans even when we do not announce anything. They’re always asking us ‘are you working on this?’ or ‘why don’t you make a sequel for that?’. Even after the announcement, the situation does not change, because then they’ll move onto asking us ‘when will it release?’ or ‘when will you show a new trailer?'”
“People are waiting for new information regardless of whether the game has been announced or not. It’s great when we manage to keep it secret for as long as possible, but these days, a lot of important projects become victims of rumors and leaks.”
“Honestly, I prefer that we officially reveal our games instead of seeing a leak or a rumor circulating online. Especially when part of the development is outsourced to other companies, there is always the risk that people outside the in-house team will spread information and images online. It is even worse when, during the development, a fake rumor sprouts that people start to believe, and it becomes necessary to decide whether to answer and deny.”
With that being said, Nomura knows the games were announced too early. But at the end of the day, the information would have leaked if Square Enix didn’t take the leap.
“The same thing happened with the remake of Final Fantasy VII,” he said. “I am well aware of the fact that we announced it too early, but even in the industry, word was beginning to spread that we were working on the game, so we just decided not to keep it a secret and officially reveal it.”