Final Fantasy VII Revelation Director Reveals Why The Physical Version

The director on Final Fantasy VII Revelation has explained the reason why the game’s physical release requires a download to play.

Speaking with IGN, Naoki Hamaguchi commented that even if Revelation was made available on two discs like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, publisher Square Enix would still have had to “compromise” on the game’s quality. As such, the “only choice” was to release the game on a single Blu-ray but with a required download to play it.

Hamaguchi-san also expressed that he’s happy just to have been able to release the game on disc as it is, given how the industry has shifted towards digital content. Sony in particular is obviously a major factor in this respect, seeing as how they announced plans to cease production of PlayStation game discs in January 2028.

First and foremost, personally, I’m very happy that we are able to release a physical disc version of FFVII Revelation considering how the entire gaming market, or the landscape, is veering towards the disc-less direction. And after we launched preorders, we did see some fans voicing their concerns and raising questions about the physical discs requiring some internet download. So I would like to address that.

When we had an internal discussion with the development team about how we wanted to approach the physical discs and the physical releases of FFVII Revelation, initially there were conversations about using the same disc size as we did for, say, FFVII Rebirth. But if we were to do that, it would mean that we would have to make a compromise in terms of the fidelity and the quality of the game. So as a development team, we didn’t want to do that. We didn’t want to make any compromises for the game. So realistically, the only choice that we had was to release this physical disc, but with certain sections of the game being a digital download format through the physical disc.

With that being said, I completely understand that not all players might be happy with this decision, but at the same time, I am happy that we were still able to release a physical format of the game. So I am quite satisfied with the end results as well. I would hope that our fans and players would be able to share that as well.

Hamaguchi recently made an appearance at PAX West last week where he revealed that Final Fantasy VII Advent Children was viewed as something of a ‘graphical goal‘ for the FFVII Remake project. In addition, slides at the panel confirmed that Square Enix is looking to make Final Fantasy VII “an IP with an ever-evolving future.”

Final Fantasy VII Revelation is due out on April 8, 2027 for PS5, PC, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X/S. PSU went hands-on with FFVII Revelation at GamesCom last month, and you can read our impressions here.

[Source – IGN]

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