If you have a fairly good memory, then you may recall when Square Enix announced way back at E3 2010 that Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions would be hitting the App Store with an expected release before the end of the year. Then in December, they officially delayed the release and gave it a new target date of Spring 2011. Back in May Square Enix once again slid the release date back, stating that Final Fantasy Tactics likely wouldn’t make it in time for Spring but should be ready for late June or mid-July.
However, on their Facebook page yesterday, Square Enix pushed the release date back yet again. Apparently they are going to need just a tiny bit of extra development time, and rather than mid-July, Final Fantasy Tactics producer Shiina expects the game to finally be available July twenty… something, or perhaps the very last couple of days in July.
To ease the pain a bit for this additional delay, Shiina offers up some info on the upcoming game. He states that the performance of the game is fast and it’s very comfortable to play on the touch screen, and there should be a new video demonstrating this soon. He also says that it will not be a universal game, and that a native iPad version should be launching about a month after the iPhone version. Additionally, the game will require at least a 3rd generation device to play.
Shiina then explains how the game will save your exact state when exiting or being interrupted by a call or text, and that this function was tricky to implement and has added to the extended development time considerably. Finally, Shiina notes that there won’t be any kind of multiplayer in the game, and at this time there are no plans to release add-ons after the game comes out, which seems a bit odd.
I love Final Fantasy Tactics just as much as the next guy, but I’m definitely ready for the game to stop being delayed and just release already. Hopefully this new late July timeframe will hold strong and we’ll all be playing the game in about a month.
