Recently, it was announced that Microsoft would be releasing a number of Final Fantasy titles on the Xbox Game Pass service. Players will be able to take part in adventures spanning from Final Fantasy VII all the way through Final Fantasy XV.
However, it almost went unnoticed that buried within this major announcement was the inclusion of another Square Enix franchise, Kingdom Hearts.
Recently, Microsoft announced that, for the first time ever, classic Kingdom Hearts games would be available on the Xbox One. These include Kingdom Hearts 1.5/2.5 ReMIX, and Kingdom Hearts 2.8, releasing on the console in 2020.
Both of these titles are game collections. They feature six fully playable games and three cinematic retellings of classic Kingdom Hearts handheld and mobile games. What made this a historic announcement is that Kingdom Hearts as a franchise had mostly been associated with PlayStation before the release of 2019’s Kingdom Hearts 3.
When Square and Disney decided to include Microsoft in the release of the long-awaited third major entry into the Kingdom Hearts franchise, it shocked a lot of longtime fans who literally grew up with Kingdom Hearts being a PlayStation title.
This goes all the way back to the release of the first Kingdom Hearts in 2002 on the PlayStation 2 console.
Now, not only will Xbox One be releasing these older titles, but they will be making all three of them available as part of its Game Pass service.
Game Pass is a service released by Xbox that includes Xbox Live Gold access and more than 100 high-quality games that can be played on the Xbox One console or PC. It is similar to PlayStation’s PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now services.
When these three titles appear in the Xbox Game Pass library, players will have immediate access to:
- Kingdom Hearts Final Mix
- Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories
- Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix
- Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep Final Mix
- Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance
- Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage
They will also be able to watch cinematic retellings of:
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
- Kingdom Hearts Re: Coed
- Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover
The Kingdom Hearts franchise follows the adventures of Sora, the legendary Keyblade Master, as he travels the worlds of Disney and Pixar animation in order to stop The Heartless, creatures who are born out of the darkness in the human heart.
Kingdom Hearts 3 released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox One on January 25, 2019. Despite being only the third numbered title in the franchise it is the 10th game to release overall.
