Final Fantasy XVI Would Still Be in Development If Not for the PS5’s Memory and SSD, Says Director

Final Fantasy XVI recently reached the coveted gold milestone, when games are printed on physical disks to be handed over to retailers ahead of the imminent launch. That was the cause of much rejoicing for franchise fans, as it was a strong (albeit not sure proof) assurance that the hotly anticipated action RPG wouldn't slip past its June 22nd release date. In fact, Final Fantasy XVI was one of the earliest titles to announce it, nearly three months before the launch schedule.

According to a statement shared by Final Fantasy XVI director Hiroshi Takai in the latest issue of Play Magazine, that wouldn't have been possible if not for the PlayStation 5's particularly fast memory and SSD.

If we didn’t have the memory that the PlayStation 5 has and also the transfer speed, the SSD, that the PlayStation 5 has, we would still be in development right now.

We've often seen strong praise for the PS5's architecture. Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, for example, famously said it was far ahead of PCs in efficiency when it launched. He also praised Sony's system architect Mark Cerny for centering the entire architecture around the so-called storage revolution. Many others expressed similar opinions, though we had never heard a game developer explicitly saying that their game development time had been cut because of the PS5's architecture.

In the same PLAY Magazine interview, Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida doubled down on the positive sentiment for Sony's console, adding that the near total lack of loading times Square Enix developers achieved in the game was due to the PS5's architecture.

Pretty much the whole game from beginning to end, you’re not going to have any load times. And to be able to do this and make it work is something we could only do with the PlayStation 5.

As a reminder, Final Fantasy XVI does not feature an open world design, as Yoshida himself commented that it would have taken much longer to develop the game that way. As such, loads and interruptions between zones will definitely still be in the game; they'll just be so brief that the player's immersion won't be impacted, as we've seen in other games made only for PlayStation 5 such as Forspoken.

Final Fantasy XVI, a PlayStation 5 exclusive (a PC version will likely happen, but not too soon), will also take advantage of the DualSense controller's unique features. On that topic, game director Hiroshi Takai recently said:

There are certain sections where the player will have to open heavy doors or lift up portcullises, and we use the adaptive triggers there to put across that feeling of effort and resistance. They’re also used when riding chocobos. The haptic feedback can produce extremely subtle vibrations, which we use to create a heightened feeling of presence in cutscenes. We converted the sound effects used in each scene into haptic data, which let us portray details that we’ve never been able to before, like the movements of the air.

Written by Alessio Palumbo