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As opposed to pop-up shops that have opened in the past, particularly in the United States, Square Enix announced today that two permanent locations combining a café and fan shop will open sometime in "Spring 2026" in Los Angeles and the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. Since we're a third of the way through Spring already, I would assume that official opening dates will be published quite soon.

The two locations will, as is quite clear, consist of a café area in which the menu will be inspired by the Squenix canon, and a shop that will have merchandise from the merch arm of the company. Neither will be directly operated by Squenix, but instead managed by licensees. The American shop will be in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, about 20 miles from Square Enix USA's headquarters. The Shinjuku shop is listed in the press release as taking up three floors in Paselabo Tower, which sounds huge, but I took a look at Google Street View and, well, it seems like "tower" might be a bit aggrandizing.

Hopefully both locations are a success and might lead to more locations in the future, even if they're just pop-up in nature.

Source: Wario64 on Twitter

Nintendo just wrapped their February Direct stream, focusing on third-party games. While Switch 2 still doesn't have a boatload of platform-specific games, a few Square Enix games are still coming soon to the newest console, including one new announcement.

First to the new game - a new Paranormasight game, "The Mermaid's Curse," was announced for the first time today, with a release date just two weeks from today, on February 19th. For games that we knew were coming soon, we got a release date for Adventures of Elliot, the new HD-2D IP from Squenix; that game will drop for all current-gen consoles and Steam on June 18th. Also, as expected, there's a release date for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on Switch 2, even earlier than Elliot - the Nintendo release of the game will be on June 3 of this year, with digital download preorders starting today.

Based on rumors circulating social media yesterday, I'd had a vague hope that there might be a trickle of info for the third game of the Remake series tied to the announcement of the Switch 2 release, but in fairness, this was a very small showing and not likely to have any groundbreaking information. It's still nice to see more Square Enix support coming to Nintendo's new platform, so we can just wait for the summer to hopefully get some big news on future flagship titles.

Sorry, Final Fantasy XIV players, it's not an in-game collab, or at least it's not yet. What is happening, in honor of the tenth anniversary of Undertale, is that Toby Fox is linking up with Squenix' Music and Merchandising division to release at least two albums and a line of apparel, with hints of other items to come.

The first album is a series of "chill" arrangements of music from Undertale, with twenty tracks in all. It's due to release at the end of January, with preorders available from the official Square Enix online storefronts in North America and Europe, and CDJapan in that country. Apparently at some point it will also be sold through Fangamer. It's not shaping up to be cheap, but then, would anyone really expect that?

The official site also announces a second album, full of piano arrangements by longtime Square Enix collaborator Yoko Shimomura, but with no tracklist or release date yet confirmed. Additionally, all other Undertale merchandise is marked as "Coming Soon" too, so don't expect to see it right away.

Source: Square Enix × Undertale Official Page

Square Enix has announced a "reboot" of the company to take place over the next three years, with goals to focus on "quality over quantity" and multi-platform releases. As a result, the company has cancelled several games in the works, including Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link which was to be a mobile game set between the events of Union X and Dark Road.

With recent PlayStation-exclusive games from Square Enix performing poorly, it's not surprising that the company will be adopting a multi-platform approach. As previously announced, Final Fantasy VII Remake will be coming to Switch 2, and the popular Final Fantasy XIV came to Xbox Series X|S last year. Expect to see more multi-platform releases in the future.

Source: Gameranx

My social media has been bursting with this news: The long-running Magic: The Gathering card game from Wizards of the Coast will be releasing a Final Fantasy expansion on June 13th, 2025. Many cards have already been teased, and the artwork looks fantastic. It'll cost a pretty penny, though: a booster box is going for US$198 on the US Amazon Store currently, and the Collector's box is a whopping $775. Additionally, all of the Commander Deck options are currently sold out at Amazon.

In other news, Square Enix is teaming up with TBS, the Japanese broadcasting company, to create a game based on a new IP. No word on what kind of game it might be, but it is confirmed to be for worldwide audiences.

Source: Magic: The Gathering Website, Nintendo Life

Nintendo's Direct for Switch 2 ran for about an hour, ending just a few minutes ago. This Direct was previously assumed to be mostly about first-party games, particularly those available near the launch window; under that assumption, the number of games presented by third parties was pretty significant.

For Square Enix fans, two titles in particular would be of interest, but neither are new. Bravely Default Flying Fairy was presented as a launch title for Switch 2 on the release date of June 5, 2025; this, the first game of the series, released for the 3DS in 2012. The remaster for Switch 2 will upscale the game and adjust the UI to suit, as well as add some new minigames. The online features from the original have been ported in as well.

Additionally, Squenix confirmed the long-standing rumor that Final Fantasy VII Remake would arrive on the Switch 2. This was not presented as a launch title, as far as I'm aware - the stream had some technical difficulties right before the announcement and I have not yet seen the complete video from that portion, just the audio. The version to be released will be the Intergrade version released for PlayStation 5 and PC, meaning it will include the additional Yuffie content. This of course implies that Rebirth may eventually come to Switch 2 as well, but that was not addressed in today's Direct.

Unfortunately, no announcements for anything Final Fantasy IX today, as many were hoping for - but there's still a few months before we hit that 25th anniversary.