Square Enix’s sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake won’t be released for the PlayStation 4, and fans who are mad about that can go ahead and blame the last-gen console’s slower storage capabilities.
Yoshinori Kitase, FFVII’s director, was asked by Gamer during a recent interview as to why FFVII Rebirth was being developed exclusively for the current generation of PlayStation, and a good portion of his answer related to the PS5’s SSD speeds. Apparently, the PS4, which supports SSDs but at a much slower speed of around 550 MB/s, wouldn’t be able to keep with the “vast world” that the developers have intended for the game.
Kitase’s comment, as translated by Gematsu:
It’s exclusive to PlayStation 5 because of the graphical quality, of course, as well as SSD access speed. Since the adventure unfolds in a vast world after the escape from Midgar, loading stress is an extreme bottleneck. We felt we needed the specifications of PlayStation 5 to overcome that and travel the world comfortably.
Square Enix will have more to share about whether FFVII Rebirth will be an open-world game or not at a later date, but Kitase’s comments about the need for faster storage speeds seems to suggest that the game will indeed have some sort of open-world element, like the world map from the 1997 original.
Square Enix announced FFVII Rebirth during the franchise’s 25th anniversary celebration broadcast last month, sharing a teaser trailer with early in-game footage of Cloud, Sephiroth, and Zack, Cloud’s close friend who dies at the hands of Shinra troops.
FFVII Rebirth will be released for the PS5 in 2023. A PC version seems inevitable, but it may take a few years to surface based on how long it took FFVII Remake to reach the Epic Games Store and Steam.