A promotional video has confirmed the terms of Sony’s timed exclusivity for Final Fantasy 16 and Forspoken on PS5 in the small print of the gameplay snippets from each game.
Enter new worlds and immerse your senses with stunning visuals, 3D Audio, haptic feedback, and adaptive triggers from the DualSense Wireless Controller on the PS5 pic.twitter.com/FIuqGjDZy4
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) November 7, 2022
Final Fantasy 16 will be a PS5 exclusive for six months after its expected Summer 2023 release date, meaning that it could arrive on other platforms at the end of the year or in early 2024, depending on when it does actually launch. Final Fantasy 16 is only slated for a PS5 release to start with, so it will likely appear on PC via Steam and/or Epic after that point. There could be secondary terms to keep it a console exclusive for longer, but we’ll have to wait and see.
As a point of contrast, Final Fantasy VII Remake has remained a PlayStation console exclusive since it launched in April 2020. It was then enhanced and released for PlayStation 5 in June 2021, and appeared on PC six months later in December 2021 – the exclusivity was possibly reset by the PS5 launch agreement.
Forspoken is a somewhat different matter. This original action RPG will release on 24th January 2023 for PS5 and PC, and will have a two year exclusivity period from that point until 23rd January 2025. That’s the earliest that the game could potentially arrive on Xbox.
All of this is a peek into the weird and wonderful world of third party exclusivity, which has become increasingly contentious as a counterpoint to the other business tactic of simply buying up publishers and developers.
