Game Pass Is Still Missing Most Of The Final Fantasy Games Microsoft Promised

At the end of 2019, Microsoft announced 10 Final Fantasy games would come to Game Pass in the following year. At the start of 2021 most of them are still missing, though Microsoft says they’ll get there eventually.

During the X019 livestream event in London near the tail end of 2019, Microsoft announced a bunch of big games coming to its Netflix-like subscription library Game Pass. These new games, which included every Final Fantasy from VII to XV (excluding the MMOs), were said to arrive “this holiday and in 2020.” As of now, nearly 14 months later, only Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, and XV have been added. Reddit is full of threads from players asking when the rest will finally arrive. It’s a real bummer considering Final Fantasy XIII looks spectacular on newer hardware, and its spin-offs are ripe for rediscovery.

In a statement to TrueAchievements, a spokesperson for Microsoft didn’t acknowledge the apparent delays, but did say the other Final Fantasy games are still on track to come to Game Pass someday. “As we announced at X019, we are excited to bring the Final Fantasy franchise to gamers with Xbox Game Pass,” the spokesperson said. “We have done so throughout 2020 and will continue to do so in 2021 and beyond. We look forward to announcing specific launch dates for more Final Fantasy titles in the future.”

Square Enix has spent the last few years remastering some of its older Final Fantasy games and porting them to new platforms. Final Fantasy X, first released on the PS2 back in 2001, was remastered for the PS3 and Vita in 2013, and finally ported to Xbox and the Nintendo Switch early in 2019. More recently, Square released an excellent remaster of Final Fantasy XII.

While both can be purchased on Xbox One and Series X/S, neither is on Game Pass yet. This is easy to understand given that they’re still potentially in high demand and also play great on the Switch. After a year of waiting to play them on Game Pass, I almost decided to buy them for a third time on Nintendo’s handheld over the holiday break. I relented, though, and went back to playing Final Fantasy X on my Vita. Hopefully I’m not still facing that same conundrum next Christmas.