You should have heard by now that Sony had its first ever exclusive fan event called the “PlayStation Experience” at Las Vegas last week, you may have heard some interesting announcements. But through all the Indies and exclusives, one announcement actually struck a bit of a nerve for me one has been explained as one of the biggest unintentional troll announcement ever made. That of course would be Final Fantasy 7 coming to PS4. Not a remake though, which has been asked for since the early to mid-PS3 era. Instead we are getting an up-scaled port of the original….sound familiar? It should. Yes, we are getting a version of Final Fantasy 7 which was released for Steam in 2012….So, are you excited? Well, you really shouldn’t be and I’ll tell you why.
I wouldn’t normally be upset with a decision like this, especially to those who are unable to play it on other systems. I would usually embrace an extra addition like this as more flexibility between systems and others who possibly sold their PS3 for the PS4, don’t have a vita/PSP, or someone who just had access to neither. Instead they should just allow emulated PS1 games like they do on the PS3, PS Vita and PSO, but that’s another discussion in itself. Either way, I should be happy I could play this classic title which could arguably be one of, if not, the best rpg ever made, especially out of the Final Fantasy series anyway. But Square Enix have completely messed up from start to Finish with this port.
Firstly, you do not have Shinji Hashimoto of Square Enix to come out on stage and talk about bringing Final Fantay 7 back! Once this has been said, in front of hundreds of PlayStation fans, their expectations have just sky-rocketed. While fans are now expecting a well-mentioned re-release of this title, you then go and show a trailer of the original FF7! I will post the video below, just look at the Just look at the poor people’s faces, who paid money to be there.
At first though that Square Enix may have just got the wrong end of the stick and somehow imagined that we were just asking for a simple port. If so they were completely ignorant to the fact that this is a well-known request. But, if that was truly the case, then do not make this such a huge announcement as it is nothing we haven’t already seen.
In my fist draft I wrote how I would expect that this port to be free to those who already purchased the original PS title on the PlayStation network. Then I remembered that Square Enix was in charge and it isn’t exactly the same version, as it has been “enhanced”. So I was expecting maybe £3-£5 to buy this almost twenty year old game, which we have most likely already purchased on the same ecosystem for basically a steam port (because new consoles are basically a PC now) from 2012. Nope, the price has been announced at $16 (around £10+tax). I’m guessing it may even come here for around £15 as there is not much differentiation between UK and the US when it comes to digital content prices on the PlayStation Store.
On Steam, although it is currently at it released price of £9.99, I guarantee this will drop back to a maximum of £3.99 like it does almost every other month or during every sale. I will expect this to be this price in the next week or two due to the Christmas Holidays. If you have a spare, underpowered PC or laptop knocking around, you could buy this now with less restrictions.
If this was made a post on the PlayStation blog like the Final Fantasy X & X-2 coming to PS4, then the feedback would not be nearly as negative. Square Enix, reduce the price please and don’t make this mistake again with any of your other classic titles.
Final Fantasy 7 will be released in Spring 2015
