During a recent interview for The Game Informer, Final Fantasy XVI Producer Naoki Yoshida affirmed his team is “looking to release a Demo for the PC version” of the game. While he couldn’t speak much about it, players will be able to experience this upcoming port before the full release.
Back when Final Fantasy XVI was first released for the PS5, it also received a Demo consisting of the first few hours of the game, which could be carried over to the main game. Speculation is that the same demo will hit PCs at some point before release.
While the port was announced right after the game was released in 2023, no official release dates have been discussed up to this moment. Yoshida remarks that it won’t take much longer to happen, though. “It won’t be too distant in the future; it won’t be a year, it won’t be two years, it will probably be shorter than that, so stay tuned”, says the producer. Many bet on a June release, coinciding with the game’s first anniversary.
While discussing the current state of the port, Yoshida remarked how it is currently reaching its final stages of optimization, so a closer release makes sense. However, he also warns about the game probably requiring some high specs to run properly.
Final Fantasy XVI had some notorious performance issues back during its launch. While Square Enix was quick to roll out some hotfixes, it goes to show how demanding this game can be. The company’s record on PC ports isn’t the best either, with Final Fantasy VII Remake being one of the biggest offenders from the last few years.
But it’s still too early to say they haven’t learned from their mistakes, and releasing a Demo is certainly one of the best ways to check how well will it run on most players’ computers. It will probably still take a few months for the full game to be available, so if you’re planning to do some upgrades, this might be the time to do it.
