Delays are certainly nothing new in the video game industry, like with the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, especially this year, what with the virus and all. Of course, that doesn’t make it any less unfortunate when things get canceled and delayed, and on the chopping block this time around is the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn North American Fan Festival. While it had originally been scheduled for this year, Square Enix is now considering a 2021 date for the fan festival. On top of that, the 5.3 patch for the game is being delayed by at least a month. This information was revealed through a post on the official website, in which producer and director Naoki Yoshida claimed that complications from the COVID-19 situation were the reason for both the cancellation and the patch delay.
Originally, the North American Fan Festival was supposed to take place in November of this year in San Diego, but that’s no longer the case. Yoshida has already said that Square Enix is looking to organize the event for the first half of next year instead. However, the fan festivals scheduled to take place in Japan and Europe are still on track, with no plans to cancel or delay them as of right now. That said, Square Enix is keeping an eye on the situation and there’s a possibility that they could cancel if the Coronavirus situation demands it. The Japanese event is scheduled for December while the European one is scheduled for February of 2021.
When it comes to the next update for Final Fantasy XIV, that being patch 5.3, it was supposed to be released on June 16th but it has been delayed by at least one month thanks to the difficulties involved in trying to work from home with the Coronavirus situation.
“If you consider our usual, pre-pandemic development production to be at 100%, we are currently sitting at around 85-90% capability,” Yoshida said. “The missing 10% can be attributed to work-from-home network issues, reduced debug efficiency, and the general stresses of adjusting to this new work environment–a gap we mean to close as time goes on.”
All things considered, we don’t have an exact date for when the patch would be released instead, as Square Enix hasn’t provided an exact date as to when that would happen. All we know is that the delay will be at least one month at the very minimum. The team at Square Enix has expressed their desire to keep the delay as brief as they possibly can, but other than that we don’t know anything.
It’s a bit of a letdown to have even more things canceled by the COVID-19 situation, but it’s pretty understandable since it is much better to be safe than sorry. Hopefully, more information about the patch itself will come to light soon enough, and we’ll have a more solid date as to when it will be released.
