Originally published on Trevor Trove on August 18, 2016
A few days ago, I wrote about the almost laughably bad issues that have plagued Final Fantasy XV in their recent delay. So let’s throw some more fuel on the fire shall we?
In a Twitter AMA today, Final Fantasy XV Director Hajime Tabata answered fan questions, including one about the recently announced season pass.
The $270 Ultimate Collector’s Edition of the game, which fans clamored to broke the Square Enix Store following the Final Fantasy XV Uncovered event will not include the game’s $25 Season Pass. It will feature an artbook, two steelbooks – one containing the anime Brotherhood and a soundtrack and the other containing the movie Kingsglaive and the game itself, a Noctis statuette, and assorted bonus content/DLC but not the Season Pass and its content for no discernible reason.
It’s not like it would be a significant challenge to include digital codes for the season pass with each copy of this over-priced nonsense, But Square Enix decided that they would rather attempt to gouge their most die-hard fans for that extra $25, rather than include it in the value here. And then they decided the best way to break that news was by allowing it to be one of the answers of a Twitter AMA. But at least they’re not going to be able to screw over any more die-hards who missed the opportunity to order the set as they will be unable to manufacture more (even with the two-month delay). I wonder if people are cancelling their orders of this set now that hype from that event has settled and if so, how many? There is no doubt a waiting list of additional people who are still eager for the set regardless so I’m sure Square Enix will sell every last one of the limited run, but it would be fascinating if the one-two punch of the delay and lack of the Season Pass actually translated to lost sales.
It is increasingly difficult to imagine myself experiencing this game with the ability to block out all of the frustration I have stocked up over the course of nearly ten years. Not even on the game itself. I’ve long come to terms with the idea that the turn-based Final Fantasy games that really interest me have been relegated to the mobile space. But the embarrasingly-long development cycle and rebranding of the game all the way through to these PR missteps frustrate the business-minded side of my brain. On the plus side, I imagine I’m going in with such low expectations that there’s no way I’ll actually be disappointed, right?
We’ll find out soon enough I guess… In the meantime, they released nearly an hour of gameplay this week at Gamescom.