Square Enix arguably broke the internet about 10 years ago when it finally revealed it was working on a long-anticipated remake of Final Fantasy 7. Now, in 2025, two parts of this trilogy project have arrived on PlayStation and PC, with ports expected on Switch 2 and Xbox in the near future.
Speaking with a number of outlets, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s director Naoki Hamaguchi shed some light on FF7 Remake’s upcoming arrival on Switch 2 and Xbox, what it took to get the game running on less powerful hardware, how Rebirth is shaping up on Switch 2, and which Final Fantasy he’d be eager to see remade next.
The key to the Switch 2’s FF7R port was nailing the lighting
Speaking to ScreenRant, Hamaguchi zeroed in on “character expressions” and “lighting” as being essential to delivering a quality experience on Nintendo’s hybrid console:
Our aim was to align more towards the lightning we see in the PS5 version, and then we also kind of balance this by aligning more towards the sort of switch to post-effect and fog. And in this way the user is not really able to make out a huge difference
In an interview with Inverse, Hamaguchi said that a Switch 2 port seemed likely early on once “Nintendo first shared with [Square Enix] the new hardware […] the thought came to me that Final Fantasy 7 can likely run on these specs.”
According to Hamaguchi, the Xbox version was already in the works before the team got their first look at the Switch 2 hardware. And, contrary to what you may think, the underpowered Series S wasn’t much of an issue. Though the team has run into some memory problems on Series S, Hamaguchi still describes Microsoft’s budget console as “quite high in terms of specs.”
FF7 Remake isn’t the only part of the remake project headed to Switch 2. The more graphically ambitious Rebirth is also expected to arrive at some point in the future. Hamaguchi described Rebirth as being in a “working state” on Switch 2. “Our desire was to be able to ultimately offer and serve all of the platforms available,” Hamaguchi told ScreenRant. He declined to say, however, whether or not the third installment will arrive as a multiplatform title on day one.
Development on part three of FF7 remake’s trilogy is ‘going extremely well’
The FF7 remake project is still ongoing, with a yet-unnamed third entry on the horizon. Hamaguchi describes development as “going extremely well.” “A lot of the content is already playable,” he told Automaton, “and the game’s direction and form are firmly set in place. Right now the team is united around refining everything.”
FF7’s remakes have certainly impressed a number of fans, but concerns over the sales of the last entry and the general direction of the various plot changes do remain. For his part, Hamaguchi has described Rebirth as “doing very well on both PS5 and PC” in terms of sales. He also shared with ScreenRant how the recent live-action Beauty and the Beast remake inspired his decisions in reinterpreting FF7 for the remake trilogy:
When development [on FF7 Remake] was happening, the Beauty and the Beast movie remake was released. That movie, the original, was one I watched as a child. And then they now had the live-action that’s a remake…I saw the overall story and the world itself was not altered, but it was completely deconstructed in a way to really entertain today’s viewers, which was deeply satisfying.
Although FF7’s remake chapters have occupied his time, Hamaguchi has spent some time daydreaming about other possible remakes in the classic JRPG series. Speaking to Windows Central, the director described FF6 as his favorite, saying “That would be very cool to take on as a remake. I’ve put my heart and soul into the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series for over a decade now. Working on something completely new would be quite fun as well.”
First Appeared on
Source link
