Over the course of the last week and a half we have had the pleasure of reporting on lots of Square Enix news regarding Final Fantasy as well as some of their other franchises like most of their Dragon Quest series. When we reported that Final Fantasy VI was heading to mobile this Winter we also mentioned that Final Fantasy VII had promising prospects in regards to arriving onto mobile in the near future. That near future seems to be longer than we had hoped… a lot longer actually.
During the talk between Kotaku and director and producer Takashi Tokita, it was mentioned that Takashi would love to see Final Fantasy VII on mobile, especially due to the rather large fan base that particular game has. It was stated that should this Legacy project, which is what Square Enix is calling this overall releasing of retro games from their most popular franchises, continue to be a success then Takashi would like Final Fantasy VII arrive on mobile in the not-so-distant future.
Shacknews went ahead and questioned Takashi further on the subject of Final Fantasy VII for mobile and the answer wasn’t as hope inspiring as the original one was.
Unfortunately, it’s not that it’s not impossible for us to develop Final Fantasy 7 for mobile. It’s that currently, space will be an issue. Phones won’t be able to contain the space it takes. It’s over a gigabyte. People are probably going to have to wait a few years. – director and producer Takashi Tokita
It is interesting to see a company like Square Enix be concerned with the space requirement that are needed to release Final Fantasy VII onto mobile. Other companies have been able to pump out games bigger than 1GB in size already onto Android. While the company may be considering internal storage only on mobile phones regarding Final Fantasy VII, it seems like they forgot that most Android phones allow for MicroSD cards for extra storage space. The PC release of Final Fantasy VII was 3GB in size which, if people are using an MicroSD card with their Android device, isn’t an issue.
What may be a more truthful underlying factor in the long wait for Final Fantasy VII on mobile is that Apple only allows games to be up to 2GB in size on iTunes. If Final Fantasy VII for mobile ends up being bigger than 2GB, that means Square Enix wouldn’t be able to release that game onto iOS.
At least this means we will be getting Final Fantasy VII at some point for mobile. This just means we will have to wait a lot longer than we had hoped. Until then there is always playing it through an emulator.
Website Referenced: Shacknews
