Final Fantasy 7 Remake director Naoki Hamaguchi claims the team is targeting PC as the foundation for the third entry in the trilogy's development as the current "highest-end gaming environment." Furthermore, the Square Enix lead calls consoles, such as the PS5 Pro, "mid-range."
In an interview with Automaton, Hamaguchi clarifies that the final entry in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is made with PC as the "foundation" of development. "As our fundamental principle, we do not design assets to meet the lowest baseline," Hamaguchi says. "Instead, we create them for high-end environments first."
He begins discussing the topic by clarifying that "the highest-end gaming environment is PC," and that the team's "3D assets are created at the highest quality level based on PC as the foundation." After the game has been built up to be the best version of itself, it is then 'reduced' which Hamaguchi describes as "adjusting assets and tuning them appropriately for each platform."
The first part of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake saga was originally designed for PS4, with the Intergrade upgrade later releasing on PS5 and PC. The second entry, Rebirth, was initially a timed exclusive for PS5, with a PC version dropping a year later. Hamaguchi has previously announced that the trilogy's final entry has been developed with a "multiplatform approach."
It's then surprising that this last hurrah wasn't developed with PlayStation as the foundation, given the series history, but Hamaguchi explains the reason simply by comparing the hardware. "Speaking in purely technical terms, we categorize PS5 and PS5 Pro as 'mid-range platforms' internally," he says. "Compared to high-end PCs, texture sizes may differ by roughly 1.5 to 2 times, mesh loading by 1.5 to 2 times, and polygon counts by more than three times. That’s how big the difference can be."
