We’ve seen our fair share of jokes about Kingdom Hearts III‘s and Final Fantasy VII Remake‘s development and release but Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura has a good explanation for why the aforementioned titles were announced “too early.”
Speaking to Italian publication Multiplayer.it (translation courtesy of Kingdom Hearts Insider), Nomura said that the decision to announce a game is a difficult one, especially since there’s pressure from fans regardless of whether developers make an announcement or not. “They’re always asking us ‘are you working on this"’ or ‘why don’t you make a sequel for that"'” he explained. “Even after the announcement, the situation does not change because then they’ll move onto asking us ‘when will it release"’ or ‘when will you show a new trailer"'” What’s particularly troubling for developers, according to Nomura, is when games start to leak and those leaks result in “fake” rumors, which fans start to believe. “It becomes necessary to decide whether to answer and deny,” he continued.
Nomura says leaks sometimes come as a result of development work being outsourced to other companies. He admits that outsourcing involves the risk of information and images being spread online by those outside the core team.
“The same thing happened with the remake of Final Fantasy VII,” ...