As Final Fantasy fans across the world wait impatiently for FFXV, let’s take some time to celebrate an important milestone. Yesterday, Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s announcement turned ten years old. Happy birthday, announcement!
Yep, an entire decade has passed since we first met Noctis. On May 8, 2006, Square Enix announced Versus XIII during their E3 press conference, declaring that it’d be part of an expanded universe alongside Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII. It would star a dark-haired prince who could manipulate weapons and seemed to have magical powers.
Just to give you some context, this was the same E3 where Sony announced the price of the PS3 (“five-hundred-ninety-nine US dollars”) and Nintendo declared that Zelda: Twilight Princess would be a Wii launch game. Other games announced at that show: Metal Gear Portable Ops, Final Fantasy VI GBA, Fable II, and Grand Theft Auto IV. Microsoft also debuted a little series they were calling Gears of War.
After many years of development hell (and limited manpower thanks to the FFXIII trilogy), Square rebooted the Versus project in 2012, officially changing it to Final Fantasy XV. They re-revealed the game at E3 of 2013, and since then, we’ve been waiting. Four months to go.