Final Fantasy 16’s PC Release Should Set the Standard for One Industry Practice

The Final Fantasy series has had a bit of a complicated history on the PC platform. Though many FF titles are readily available on storefronts like Steam and Epic Games Store nowadays, most of the games in the franchise have had delayed PC launches. In fact, over the course of the series’ 37-year-existence, no single-player mainline Final Fantasy title has ever been released on PC day-one. Instead, save for the MMO installments like FF11 and FF14, just about every numbered FF game has taken a year or more to come to PC, even in the case of multiplatform releases like FF13 and FF15.

The franchise’s latest mainline installment, Final Fantasy 16, sadly continues this trend. After years of anticipation, this acclaimed action RPG was released on June 22, 2023, the title launched as a PlayStation 5 exclusive due to a deal that Sony made with Square Enix. A few months after its launch, though, FF16 producer Yoshi-P confirmed that a PC port of the game was in development. However, the aforementioned port won’t be released until September 17, 2024, more than a year after FF16‘s initial launch on PS5. While this long release gap is likely disappointing for many, Square Enix is at least offering some sort of respite for PC gamers: Final Fantasy 16‘s Standard Edition only costs $50 on Steam and Epic Games Store, which is $20 less than the $70 price tag the game launched with on PlayStation. Square Enix should adopt this pricing strategy for not just delayed ports of future Final Fantasy games, but all games in general.

The $70 Price Tag Has Been a Big Point of Criticism in This Console Generation

After the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were released in 2005 and 2006, respectively, the universally-adopted price tag for a AAA game became $60. This was widely accepted as the standard for roughly 15 years; that is, until the start of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S generation. In 2020, publishers like Take-Two Interactive, PlayStation Studios, and Activision announced their intent to raise the price of their games to $70 to coincide with the release of the next-generation consoles. The gaming community’s reaction to this price hike was unsurprisingly negative, but it didn’t stop other publishers from following suit in the coming years. Nowadays, just about every big-budget AAA game costs $70.

Paying $70 for newly-released video games is already pretty contentious, but paying $70 for ports of older video games is even more egregious. Sadly, old video games on new platforms launching at a $70 price tag have been a pretty common occurrence these last few years. Square Enix itself, for instance, has been guilty of this with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which came out on PC roughly a year after its initial release on PS5 and still cost $70 on Steam and Epic Games Store nonetheless.

More Publishers Should Release Their Older Games at $50 Instead of $70

Final Fantasy 16 launching with a $50 price tag on PC instead of a $70 one like FF7 Remake should be the start of a new trend for both Square Enix and the industry at large. Older video games are typically brought to new platforms with the intent of reaching a new audience. However, when these ports of 1 to 2-year-old titles cost upwards of $60-$70, publishers are likely limiting the amount of people that can be attracted on said platforms. If more companies start releasing their legacy games at reduced prices, like Square Enix is doing with Final Fantasy 16, then these titles may be able to reach a wider audience and, in turn, increase the popularity of their franchises long-term.