Final Fantasy Resonance has been an undeniable hit for Square Enix, but it turns out that its producer's pitch initially faced some pushback from executives at the company who would have preferred the game to be a basic port.
Resonance is sort of like what Octopath Traveler 0 is to Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, except for Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. Both titles have taken mobile games that came before them and adapted parts of their stories – in Octopath's case, also adding more narrative content – for a full console launch, removing mobile elements like microtransactions and gacha systems in the process.
Given that Final Fantasy Brave Exvius was previously shut down, Resonance is also helping keep its legacy alive, but beyond its ties to the mobile game, it's also a new HD-2D turn-based Final Fantasy experience that a lot of people have been craving for some time. Speaking to Bloomberg in an interview, producer Keisuke Nakashima reveals that his pitch in 2020, which suggested expanding the mobile game for a proper console adaptation, first faced resistance from Square Enix execs who were apparently more keen on the idea of pursuing a simple, cheaper port that'd be faster to make.
"I didn't want to go down that route," Nakashima says. "I wanted to create an original version for consoles that was a full-blown gameplay experience."
Nakashima recalls hearing some "really disappointing" feedback about Brave Evius during a press tour for the mobile game, where, despite plenty of people being interested in it, they expressed that they "didn't want to play it just because of the gacha elements." He explains: "That was another reason we wanted to make this a console game, to bring it to a wider audience."
It's certainly working for Square Enix, anyway – it reached the largest ever Steam player peak for the series' single-player games, and less than five days since launch, one analyst estimated that it'd sold 400k copies across PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam, bringing in around $20 million in revenue. Hopefully those initially doubtful execs are happy now.
