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One of the major disappointments from Summer Game Fest, despite getting Revelation information, was the lack of Kingdom Hearts updates. Nintendo and Square Enix fixed that - a little - with this morning’s Nintendo Direct.

For the first time in years, we got to see some evidence that the game still exists, in the form of a new teaser shown late in the event.There’s not much detail to be had, still, and certainly no sniff of a release window; but at least the company confirmed that the game will be released to every major current platform, day-and-date for launch.

Elsewhere in the teaser, we get to see a number of snippets of cutscenes, mostly centered around battles with various Heartless, including one very massive one. Some of the combat appears to be live, as well, though none of these scenes had any interface layer shown on screen.

A quick cut through other characters is interspersed through the combat, confirming a few characters like Luxu, Luxord, and Strelitzia. A couple new characters appear as well, but what appears to be pretty thin so far is Disney representation; only Donald and Goofy show up in the new trailer at all, and only for the briefest glimpse. This tracks with the direction of the series and this particular game, though it might still be a bit disappointing for fans.

During this morning's Nintendo Direct, Square Enix announced a new HD-2D turn-based RPG being released on October 22nd, 2026. Titled Final Fantasy Resonance it's a remake - not a port - of Season 1 of the retired mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. The game will incorporate battle upgrades and other story content from later in Brave Exvius' lifespan.

For those who never played the mobile game: the premise is that Rain and Lasswell, who are Knights from Grandshelt, have been granted the power of Visions, which allows them to summon characters from across the Final Fantasy franchise to fight at their sides. These Visions level up independently of the main characters. Unlike Brave Exvius, though, where Visions could be used in place of the main characters, screenshots from Final Fantasy Resonance show the Visions alongside the main characters. In one such screenshot, we see Rain summoned Charlotte (FFBE), Lid summoned Aileen (FFBE), Fina summoned Shantotto (FFXI) and Jake summoned Firion (FFII).

Along with those mentioned above, the following Visions have been confirmed thus far:

• The Warrior of Light, Final Fantasy I
• Terra, Final Fantasy VI
• Cloud, Final Fantasy VII
• Zidane, Final Fantasy IX
• Shantotto, Final Fantasy XI
• Y'shtola, Final Fantasy XIV

The game will be coming to PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch 1 and 2.It'll be interesting to see if future seasons of Brave Exvius will be released as sequels to Final Fantasy Resonance, as the mobile game featured four seasons and numerous story events.

Source: IGN

Everyone and their brother (and specifically my daughter, who sat through two hours of Summer Game Fest just for this) was expecting the third game of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series to show today. And if you weren’t confident, seeing Naoki Hamaguchi come on stage for Tifa in Street Fighter 6 probably cemented it for you.

And that’s just what happened; we got a lot of information about the final game today, including the subtitle, trailers for both scenery and gameplay, and a release window. Here’s what I saw, but correct me where I’m wrong.

The initial action drops straight into the Highwind with the party on board, with a parachute mechanic to get where they’re going. Some brief glimpses of Wutai and Midgar appear first, with a bit of combat from new party members Vincent and Cid - nothing unexpected there. Some scenes revealing the Weapons (who seem based on the voiceover work to possibly not be optional bosses any more), the tiniest glimpse of Tifa in a new costume blasting magic, and a scene of the party surrounded by Whispers and Aerith’s flowers… and the name reveal of Final Fantasy VII Revelation. That’s all in the reveal trailer below; check out the thumbnail, which has a very Renaissance-era Biblical quality to it that you might expect from the name:On stage at Summer Game Fest, though, it continued, with Matt Mercer, voice of Vincent, coming on stage with Hamaguchi to talk through a few more details. Hamaguchi explained that the theme of the game to him is “Resolve,” which is interesting because that could have also been a subtitle for the game. Mercer describes the general scenario for the game, covering the Highwind, the arrival of Meteor, and the new locations you’ll see including Mideel and Wutai. They imply pretty heavily that there will be a more open world with less linearity, which makes sense.

From there, they show more combat; the combat system looks every similar to Rebirth, though it appears that characters can have multiple summons available now. Square Enix were willing to show Ifrit being summoned, but eagle-eyed watchers can see Magic Pot and Titan also in the menu.

We got to see more combat detail for the new fighters, including Vincent turning into the Galian Beast mid-battle and even apparently having Synergy abilities to use while in that form; we also got to see Cid’s rapid strikes with his lance and Dragoon-style combat traversal, as well as an area of effect attack.

The biggest combat reveal, though, was Function Integrated Tactical Suitwear, or FITS. This came absolutely out of the blue, but it appears to be a job system for everyone, giving different movesets and costumes for all the playable characters. The characters can stay as “Freelancers,” apparently retaining the combat abilities we’ve gotten used to over the last two games, but can change into specialties as well. The only two seen in the stream are “Warrior” and “Black Mage,” so it’s unclear both what other ones might exist and whether each character only gets a few of them or if they are available globally. In the video, Cloud has access to Warrior and Tifa has Black Mage, with Cait Sith shown in some other sort of mage robes and Barret in heavy technical-looking armor.

The pair on stage cut to one last video: Sapphire Weapon attacking Junon. It looks fantastically powerful, as one would expect. It was the last glimpse before the release window: Spring 2027. So, sadly, we won’t have it for Christmas this year, but we certainly look to be getting it day-and-date for all platforms.So there you have it, the Revelation Reveal. I hope you’re as excited as everyone in my house was!

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Dragon Quest series, with the first game releasing for Famicom on this day in 1986 (in Japan, of course - it didn't come to the west until three years later). Squenix had teased an announcement video for several days beforehand, and it was assumed that like in most similar videos, there would be some mention of special events and progress on the newest mainline game, first announced five years ago.

We got something slightly different. That newest mainline game, "The Flames of Fate," is no longer a thing, and the twelfth game has apparently been restarted from scratch and is now subtitled "Beyond Dreams." It's unclear when this restart happened, or how much longer it will take for the revamped game to be released, though from the brief clips shown, it will still certainly look like one would expect a current-gen Dragon Quest game to be. One thing that is made very clear is that Yuji Horii is no longer interested in the "darker" storyline for this game, as the official translation specifically reflects him saying that the world of the new version reflects a "bright and exciting future."

One more announcement came at the end of the video - a new game in the Dragon Quest Monsters series. This one is subtitled "The Withered World," but beyond that and the platforms for which it will release (all of the usual ones), there's no detail to be had yet, including a potential release window. The entire announcement video is nine minutes long, with the first few dedicated to a quick recap of prior games, and you can watch it just below.

Source: Dragon Quest Official YouTube

Yes, Final Fantasy XI is not only still around, but doing well these days: the game is currently celebrating its 24th Anniversary. For the occasion, Square Enix teamed up with an animation artist to create this short movie commemorating the game's adventures over the years:



Not only that, but the game will soon feature an expanded free trial. Currently, free trial users are limited to 14 Earth days of gameplay, but soon the limited timeframe will be a thing of the past. Players will be able to play for an unlimited time, up to level 75.

As one might expect, there are some restrictions: free trial players will not have access to any expansions, will not be able to trade items with other users, will not be able to access the Auction House, cannot initiate parties, and will be limited from using certain chat features.

It's unclear if the expanded free trial is active already, or if it will be rolled out in a future version update.

Also: the game's complete digital edition is currently on sale for the low price of $9.99. That sale goes through the early hours of Tuesday, June 9th, 2026.

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun, Final Fantasy XI Official Website

Earlier today, Square Enix published a new website to announce a contest for Japanese indie game developers to win a share of a billion yen (over 6.25 million USD) and a publishing partnership with Squenix over the next year.

The contest is for unaffiliated game developers who are working on unreleased games; the developers can be individuals or groups/companies, but they must be located in Japan. There appear to be no restrictions on what genre or style the games can be, but they should be targeted to the PC or mobile markets. It also appears that AI usage may be acceptable, within guidelines that the company has yet to publish. There will be fifteen winners, all of whom will get support from Squenix in terms of publishing and marketing the game, sales royalties, and a lump prize payment starting at 30 million yen and going up to 300 million for the grand prize winner.

Developers can start submitting their proposals in December and through next March. Starting from there, Squenix will evaluate the entries based on the developers' written descriptions and short YouTube videos, with the best entries moving on to be evaluated based on actual gameplay and finally interviews. The winners will be announced in June 2027.

The rules of this contest appear to be quite wide open, so there's no telling what sorts of games might come out of this or whether any may someday be available outside of Japan; maybe we'll see the result in a little over a year's time.



Source: Square Enix Game Contest 2026