One of the most anticipated games of the year has seen its release date pushed back by more than a month.
Today, Square Enix confirmed that Final Fantasy VII Remake’s release will be delayed from its original date of March 3, 2020 to its new date of April 10, 2020. The announcement was made via the game’s official Twitter account.
The bad news came from the game’s producer, Yoshinori Kitase. In the official tweet, he apologized for the delay.
“In order to ensure we deliver a game that is in-line with our vision, and the quality that our fans who have been waiting for deserve, we have decided to move the release date to April 10, 2020,” Kitase said in the official announcement.
Fans have been clamoring for this game for five years now, since the original announcement trailer was shown at E3 2015. After that, there was virtually no word from Square while they completed work on titles like Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3.
“We are making this decision in order to give ourselves a few extra weeks to apply a final polish to the game and to deliver you with the best possible experience,” Kitase went on to say. “I, on behalf of the whole team, want to apologize to everyone, as I know this means waiting for the game just a little bit longer.”
This news also drops on the same day that Square announced that their upcoming Marvel’s Avengers game will be delayed a full four months from its original May release date into September.
It’s also interesting to note that Final Fantasy VII Remake has recently experienced a number of leaks, with spoilers flowing onto the internet after hackers managed to gain access to the game’s official playable demo.
After hacking their way into the demo, the hackers discovered a ton of information contained in its files, including the game’s official size, the weapon list, PC code, and a great many plot points that Square likely wanted kept under wraps.
Square has not confirmed the existence of the demo yet, but it has been leaked online since right before the new year.
Most games of this size and magnitude experience some form of delay, so this was not totally unexpected.
While this is very disappointing to the fans who have been eagerly awaiting this game for years, it is always better for developers to take their time to ensure a proper release. When they don’t, you get games like Mass Effect Andromeda and WWE 2K20 which dropped with major game breaking bugs.
A quote attributed to Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto rings particularly true on this day. “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”
