5. Final Fantasy XV
By the time the Switch comes around, FFXV will be several months old, and most people who were going to pick it up likely will have already done so. It’s a game a decade in the making, after all. Even so, the very presence of a main Final Fantasy title would be the biggest sign that the proverbial hatchet between Nintendo and Square Enix has indeed been buried. To really understand what this would mean, a history lesson is needed: Back in the 1990s, the Nintendo 64’s cartridge-based system was a necessary evil of game production—Nintendo owned the market and was capable of setting all the rules. But when Nintendo inadvertently created a rival of Sony by shafting them on a CD attachment for the 64, they also gave developers a way to break out of the cartridge. Sony’s PlayStation was based on CDs, meaning games could be created that were much larger than the capacity of the N64 cartridge. As a result, Square Enix (then called SquareSoft) could produce the full vision for their plans for Final Fantasy, resulting in the franchise making the move away from Nintendo and never looking back. Spinoffs and other Square Enix titles have been on Nintendo consoles, but the main series has always avoided this. While the appearance of Cloud Strife in Super Smash Bros. last year was a pretty good indicator that the relationship had been restored, it simply wouldn’t mean as much as a proper Final Fantasy would to potential customers.
Admittedly, I would also relish the irony of the cartridge-based Nintendo Switch playing Final Fantasy after all these years.
Advertisement
