‘Final Fantasy 15’ Director Says Release Date Delayed As ‘Optimization Isn’t Sufficient’

It was previously announced earlier this month that the long awaited release of the decades-long in the making "Final Fantasy XV" will be extended by another two months from its original September release date due to optimization issues, now director Hajime Tabata has provided some more specific details about what those issues actually are.

Speaking with the Japanese video gaming magazine Famitsu, with a translation provided by Kotaku, "Final Fantasy XV" director Hajime Tabata said that "for starters, the optimization isn't [yet] sufficient."

According to Tabata, some examples of the issues his development team are currently tackling in the added times they have until launch are "various bugs" and other performance issues like frame rate drops in certain areas within the game. Noting that while none of these bugs are particularly game breaking or will otherwise impede the player's progress, there are a good number of them.

Other optimization issues with the game are things like character models "floating unnaturally in the air or appearing all strange [and glitch]." It should be noted that such optimization problems are becoming more and more common place in recent years within the gaming industry, though developers still push to release their title on expected release dates.

Some good examples of developers releasing titles despite poor optimization are Ubisoft and Bethesda, with the former's 2014 release of "Assassin's Creed: Unity" being infamous for its horrible graphical issues while the latter's releases are generally ridden with bugs that are sometimes even game breaking.

Developers only try to address the issues by instituting day one patches that are quite substantial in size, and this is something that Tabata is hoping to avoid due to the discovery that not every gamer can actually easily access the internet or download a massive file.

Tabata cited data that accounted that only a little more than twenty percent of Japanese gamers have a console and a connection to the Internet, although having both does not necessarily mean the console is easily connected to the internet.

It is because of the above that Tabata and his development team are planning to iron out all the possible kinks for the game in the now-three months until "Final Fantasy XV" releases.

Originally scheduled for a September 30 release date, "Final Fantasy XV" is now slated to hit stores on November 29. An almost hour-long gameplay demo of the current version of the game has been released on the recently held Gamescom 2016 for players to whet their appetites until "Final Fantasy XV" finally releases.