Final Fantasy 7 remake director says he hopes Revelation will get 'some kind of physical edition' despite the industry and Sony's 'shift away' from discs

Final Fantasy 7: Revelation is on the horizon, but there's a looming shadow—Sony's recent mandate that there'll be no disks in the publisher and console developer's future, a move that's been controversial, to say the least. It had multiple developers, including the minds behind Clair Obscur Expedition 33, mourning the loss of physical copies.

For FF7 remake director Naoki Hamaguchi, the shift away from physical editions in general means that Revelation's own existence in meatspace is up in the air, speaking to our friends over at Gamesradar+: "I can't say anything particularly definitive at this point in time. But I am working to make the arrangements to allow us to have some kind of physical edition."

He's absolutely noticed the way the wind is blowing, though even if discs are fading into the rear-view, he'd like a lot about the culture of real-world videogame enthusiasm to remain: "I do feel, as a developer and as a fan, that the general trend is for things to shift away from physical towards downloadable games.

"But that's obviously talking about the trend. Personally, here at something like Fan Fest or at community events for games that I've worked on, I really think that people bringing up things, asking for autographs—I think that's lovely. I think it's a wonderful culture and it would be a shame to lose that. I want that to remain."

Even if disks are done, however, Hamaguchi says there could always be a physical edition with a code in it: "Maybe you'll have a box with the code inside it, or maybe key cards like Nintendo's doing, or a boot disc or something. I feel like there'll always be something, and I hope there will be."

Personally-speaking, it'd be a great shame—yes, I'm mostly on Steam nowadays, something I'm becoming increasingly-aware isn't the greatest idea. But I still think the option to physically own things you buy, rather than tying them to inherently temporary servers that can go down and revoke your license at any point, is vital to the hobby not becoming a complete nightmare.

Especially in the case of Final Fantasy, where as I feel having games so massive they need to span multiple discs is a massive part of their charm—I still remember the prospect of the old PlayStation 1 versions coming with multi-part discs really hammering home how vast they were. Now all we get are chunky download sizes and SSD jenga. Ah, the good old days.

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Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.