Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida says the next FF16 trailer is likely to release in October, giving fans another look at the next entry in one of the best fantasy game series. The announcement was made during the Tokyo Games Show, at the Japan Game Awards. We already knew that there would be no Final Fantasy 16 at TGS, but the upcoming game did receive a ‘Future Division’ award at the show.
While on stage to accept the award on behalf of Square Enix, Yoshida is asked about when fans can next expect to hear about Final Fantasy XVI, with new information previously promised to arrive during autumn (found at 47:50 in this video – note that it’s in Japanese).
Yoshida responds (via Gematsu) that he hasn’t had a chance to talk to the marketing or PR team for FF16 recently, so he isn’t sure how much he can say. However, he does state that “We’ll probably be able to release the trailer next month or so… And after that, I hope to be able to give a rough idea of when it will be released.”
Previously, a trailer shown during a Sony State of Play livestream in June set the Final Fantasy 16 release date window to ‘summer 2023.’ Since then, Yoshida has confirmed that players will take control of main protagonist Clive and will have the opportunity to get hands-on with Final Fantasy 16 summons, known as Eikons. However, he noted that other party members will be AI-driven “to allow players to focus solely on controlling Clive.”
Recent teasers about the Final Fantasy 16 story suggest that it could centre around the fight for aether, one of the main Final Fantasy energy sources and described by Yoshida as akin to magical oil. Meanwhile, Yoshida’s other main game, FFXIV – one of the best MMOs on PC – is in the midst of preparing its next narrative arc, with Yoshida saying that the FFXIV 7.0 story planning process is now complete.