What’s In A Name? Why FFXIII-Versus Became FFXV

Easily one of the most talked about, most exciting reveals at this year’s E3 was famed developer Square Enix’s unveiling their forthcoming title, Final Fantasy XV. Of course, we already technically knew about FFXV, albeit under a different name. When audiences first feasted their eyes on this game, it was named Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and it officially retained that title right up until the big reveal just over a week ago.

The decision to rename FF Versus XIII began long before last week, however.

According to an interview with Famitsu, game director Tetsuya Nomura explained why and how the game went through such a strange naming sequence.

“Around one or two years after we announced Final Fantasy Versus XIII it was suggested to us to shift to Final Fantasy XV as part of the company’s direction,” Nomura quipped. “By that time, a fair amount of time had already passed since the announcement and Versus was a well-known title so it wasn’t a given that this would be XV; it could have still been Versus. Personally, I came to accept the idea once Final Fantasy Agito XIII’s name was changed to Final Fantasy Type-0 [around two years ago].”

So, it seems that the title change was due, in part, from pressure to advance the franchise the same way that gaming consoles were evolving. But why wait until this year’s E3 to drop the news?

“As for the timing of the announcement,” Nomura continued (it appears he was reading our minds), “given that we were changing platforms as well, [the timing] wasn’t something we could decide on our own discretion. We worked together with assorted other divisions to get it announced at this E3.”

So just like the name changing itself, to the decision to tell the public about this rebranding was more a move meant to mirror the progression of the industry than anything else. Fair enough.

A New Name, A New System, A New Start

On top of changing the name of the game, the former PS3 exclusive will not only now be bumped up to a PS4 title, but, much to the great relief of Microsoft fans everywhere, will be a cross-platform release as well.

This should come as a surprise, as both FFXIII and its sequel FFXIII-2 were also cross-platform successes, but regardless Nomura expounded upon this as well.

“With current-gen systems,” Nomura rationalized, “we couldn’t fully express what we wanted to do in this project.” We built an alpha version about a year ago, and the company response was ‘If you remained bound to the current generation, will it be the product you envisioned?’ They suggested shifting fully to next-gen, and that was the spark that led to the move.”

This move almost certainly has some underlying economic rationale behind it as well, especially considering the recent financial troubles of SqEnix. With a wider audience base comes a wider profit margin. And Nomura didn’t count out the possibility of a future PC release either. Though he claimed that the high-spec engine the game runs on would take a “pretty expensive PC” to have it run properly, thus making it unprofitable to mass-produce a PC version of the game. He also alluded to the fact that “if we get a lot of people in the future who want to play it with full specs” that Square Enix would “discuss supporting that.”

A rose by any other name…

Regardless of if it had remained FF Versus XIII, the newest installment in the Final Fantasy franchise looks beautiful, polished, and exciting. Sure, there’s been some red tape they’ve had to jump through on the way to its release, and yeah, we’re all tired of waiting for it; but, won’t it just be so, so sweet once it’s finally here?!