Xbox is getting Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth next week
Square Enix's massive RPG finally makes the jump to Microsoft consoles as part of the early June release lineup.
Microsoft has announced its upcoming game lineup for the first week of June, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the headline arrival for Xbox consoles. Microsoft published the roster on Xbox Wire, placing the RPG at the top of the schedule for June 1 through June 5.
The game originally launched as a PlayStation 5 exclusive on February 29, 2024. Sony and Square Enix confirmed at the time that the exclusivity window was only three months. The actual wait for Xbox players ended up being much longer. The port arrives over two years after the initial release.
Over two years after the PS5 launch
Rebirth is the second entry in the planned trilogy remaking the 1997 PlayStation original. It picks up immediately after the events of 2020's Final Fantasy VII Remake, pushing Cloud and his party out of the cyberpunk city of Midgar and into a massive open world. The game shifts from linear corridors to wide open regions filled with side quests, combat challenges, and an absurd number of minigames.
Square Enix's slow Xbox rollout
This release fits into a larger pattern of Square Enix slowly bringing its catalog to Microsoft's ecosystem. The publisher has been patching up the holes in its Xbox library over the last few years. Octopath Traveler 2 was released on Xbox consoles on June 5, 2024. Final Fantasy XIV also finally made the jump to Xbox earlier that same year after a decade of PlayStation and PC exclusivity.
Now, almost exactly two years after Octopath Traveler 2 arrived, Rebirth is landing on the platform. The first part of the remake trilogy, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, is already available on Xbox. Players can run through the continuous story without switching hardware.
Scaling down for the Series S
The technical execution on Xbox hardware will be something to watch. Rebirth pushed the PlayStation 5 hard, offering a choice between a 30 frames-per-second graphics mode and a 60 frames-per-second performance mode. The performance mode famously suffered from severe image quality issues at launch before receiving several patches to clean up the blurry visuals.
The Xbox Series X should handle the game similarly to Sony's console. The Xbox Series S is a different story. Square Enix will have to scale back resolution, texture quality, or framerate targets to fit the open world into the smaller console's memory limits. The developer has not detailed the performance targets for Microsoft's machines yet.
150 gigabytes of minigames
Players can also buy a Digital Deluxe Edition. This version includes a digital artbook, a mini soundtrack, and extra in-game items like the Magic Pot summoning materia.
Anyone preparing for the release should check their storage space. The PlayStation 5 version of Rebirth shipped on two discs and required nearly 150GB of storage space. The Xbox Series X and S versions will likely demand a similar chunk of your solid-state drive.
The rest of the June 1 to June 5 lineup includes smaller indie titles and ID@Xbox releases. Square Enix's RPG is the obvious anchor for the week.
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