‘Final Fantasy 15’ director to unveil new JRPG in 2022

Final Fantasy 15 director Hajime Tabata has said that his new JRPG will be revealed at some point next year.

Tabata directed Final Fantasy 15 at Square Enix, which launched in 2016. He also served as a producer on some of the game’s spin-offs. In November of 2018, Tabata left Square Enix after founding a new studio for the company. He then announced and formed JP Games, which will be making his next title.

In an interview with Japanese site 4Gamer, Tabata said in response to aspirations for next year that “It looks like we’ll be able to unveil the RPG under development later this year.

“The goal for 2022 is to expand the game business and the metaverse business to power up the company,” he added.

Tabata also said that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience was the most impressive game he had seen this last year.

Elsewhere within the Final Fantasy franchise, producer Naoki Yoshida has said that the coronavirus pandemic has delayed the development of Final Fantasy 16 by almost half a year.

“In an effort to offset the effects of COVID-19, we’ve had to decentralise that workforce by permitting staff to tackle their assignments from home,” Yoshida wrote. “This has unfortunately hampered communication from the Tokyo office, which, in turn, has led to delays in – or in extreme cases, cancellations of – asset deliveries from our outsource partners.”

As of right now, the game still has no release date, but this statement from Yoshida does indicate that we will probably not see a release until late 2022 or early 2023, with the next “big reveal” for the title to be taking place in spring of 2022 according to Yoshida as well.

In other news, NFL legend and face of the EA NFL sports games, John Madden, has died aged 85.