Today Square Enix is hosting the Final Fantasy XVI pre-launch celebration, and it announced the release timing for the Final Fantasy XVI demo.
According to the announcement made by producer Naoki Yoshida and localization director Michael Christopher Koji Fox, the demo launches tomorrow, June 12, and below you can check out the specific timing for each region. The game includes a prologue lasting a bit over 2 hours of gameplay and the save game will transfer to the finished game.
Once you complete the prologue, it unlocks a second portion, which is a special battle demo providing a better look at the combat system with more abilities unlocked that wouldn't be available in the prologue. Of course, this is separate from the story of the prologue, so its save game won't transfer to the final game.
On top of the demo announcement, we also got two trailers, one providing another look at the game and another featuring live-action. You can check both out below.
Final Fantasy XVI is coming for PS5 on June 22. If you'd like to learn more, you can read my preview and enjoy our interview with producer Naoki Yoshida and art director Hiroshi Minagawa. Incidentally, the demo you'll be able to play tomorrow sounds like most of the content that I tested myself for my preview back in April.
Today, we also learned that PlatinumGames and the Kingdom Hearts team at Square Enix participated in the development of the game.
Speaking of Final Fantasy news, a couple of days ago we saw a new trailer of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which will release in early 2024. Considering that the next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV will likely be announced in July and should come in 2024 as well (if the usual patterns are preserved), fans of the franchise have a lot to look forward to in the semi-near future.