Hajime Tabata, the director behind Square Enix’s action role-playing game, Final Fantasy XV, said that he “messed up” with his initial choice for the game’s release date.
During an interview with Den Faminico Gamer, Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata was asked to share some stories that he could only tell now. In response, he talked about his time working the Final Fantasy series. He mentioned that Square Enix executives would tend to leave everything to him if he decided to leave it to them. He recalled that, with Final Fantasy XV, the studio naturally had a general deadline of “release it by this year,” but the development team was given a lot of freedom when it came to deciding the details of the release date, such as which month it would be released in and adjusting the schedule.
Tabata coordinated with various departments within Square Enix, but he was still essentially left to make his own decisions. As such, he took the development situation into consideration and properly understood the situation of competing titles, and initially decided on the release date of September 30, 2016, for Final Fantasy XV. However, about a month after deciding the release date, he found himself holding his head in his hands. He admitted that he had “messed up.”
After much deliberation, Tabata began to think about moving the initial release date for Final Fantasy XV ahead by two months. Ultimately, him and the development team thought it would be best to release the action role-playing game in a better condition than to force a release earlier. As such, the game ended up seeing the light of day on November 29, 2016.
The Final Fantasy XV director said that delaying the release date of a new entry in the Final Fantasy series would really cause a lot of trouble for a lot of people. He reiterated that it was “really the biggest mistake”.
