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Update: ‘Final Fantasy XV’ director says PC version won’t have a 170GB footprint

Brad Jones
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Final Fantasy XV
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Square Enix has confirmed plans to make Final Fantasy XV available for the PC in 2018. While early technical specs for the game state that it will require a pretty enormous amount of storage, that may not be the whole truth. Game director Hajime Tabata has now released a statement refuting the claims of a 170GB install size.

Beyond showing concern for their humble solid state drives, Final Fantasy fans were surprised at the initial announcement. The console version of the game weighs in at “just” 64.8GB on the Xbox One. While some additional storage space would be expected for a PC release with improved graphics, nobody quite expected a near tripling of the requirements.

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Fortunately, though, that seems to have been a concern we needn’t have had.

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“That was a mistake, actually,” Tabata said of the install size requirement (via Kotaku). “That was a communications mistake — something got put in a memo that really shouldn’t have.”

He also clarified that the game wouldn’t be locked at 30 frames per second as the specifications suggested. That was merely based on what a GTX 1080 Ti graphics card was capable of delivering at 4K resolution.

Elsewhere, Tabata revealed plans for mod support in the PC version during an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun. “We definitely want to do it,” he pledged. “We haven’t actually managed to get our full modding policy or discussions on that finished but at the moment we do really want to do it. We’ll have the full details around autumn time.”

It’s easy to see how mod support would be a big enough addition to convince fans to purchase the game once again on PC. Square Enix has already made a range of tweaks to it via post-launch updates, such as a major patch that edited the game’s story, but it will certainly be interesting to see what kind of mods the community comes up with.

It’s reasonable to expect that Tabata is talking about Steam Workshop support, given that Final Fantasy XV is set to make its way to Valve’s marketplace, according to a report from Gear Nuke. However, he went on to acknowledge that this feature might not make it in time for launch, and there’s a chance that it might not end up making the cut at all.

While we do now know that Final Fantasy XV won’t be quite as big as initially expected, it’s still likely to be a sizable game. Its predecessors certainly have been. Back in its day, Final Fantasy VII was considered massive, as it required several discs and was famously too big for Nintendo’s cartridge-based hardware. Its Steam rerelease though, takes up little more than 1GB.

Final Fantasy XV is expected to be released for the PC in early 2018, but don’t hold out any hopes for that VR version.

Update: Added news of Tabata refuting earlier claims of a 170GB install size.

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Brad Jones
Brad Jones
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…
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