News

The new D23 Ultimate Fan Event taking place this weekend in Anaheim started big, with a ton of new info about upcoming movies and shows in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Frozen, Bluey, and... wait, I briefly forgot what website I was writing for.

Kingdom Hearts, yes, that's what we're here for at the moment. Now that we know that Kingdom Hearts IV is genuinely something that exists, Disney and Square Enix are certainly not going to stop giving us more information about it, and that started last night with a new trailer focusing mostly a new world from Pixar's Coco and Quadratum, the "real world." Sora gets a pretty slick-looking keyblade with a Dia de Muertos theme in there, too.

Separately, Disney also announced a new anime series based on Kingdom Hearts that will be aired on Disney Channel and Disney Plus (or, one would have to assume, local variants of each worldwide). There's no specific information about the characters or worlds to be involved yet, nor a release date, though Polygon reports that Tetsuya Nomura and other Squenix staff are involved in development at some level.

Source: Polygon

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

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

I literally can't believe this game is turning 25. Square Enix can, though, and as usual they've published a special website for commemorating games' big anniversaries.

The Japanese anniversary is on July 19, and the site rolled out today - depending on your definition of "today" vis-a-vis time zones. At the moment, there's not a lot going on, but as usual they have plenty of merch listed already. There are some adorable plush figures coming at the end of July, and the requisite new books and music coming more at the start of that month. There will also be a pop-up store somewhere in Japan, but there are no details there yet.

Hopefully the merch comes to the West as well, namely (for me) the new art book entitled "Eternal Spira." As I'm playing through the game right now, I've gotten a new appreciation from the crazy art choices the team made along the way.

Source: Final Fantasy X 25th Anniversary Special Page