FF7 Remake Part 3 Director Explains Why a Multiplatform Release Won’t Hold the Game Back

Final Fantasy 7 (FF7) Remake trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi has gone into detail about why releasing the third and final chapter across multiple platforms, including Xbox Series S and Nintendo Switch 2 won’t drag down the game’s overall quality.

In an interview with Automaton, Hamaguchi was confronted with a common concern among fans: that designing Part 3 with less powerful hardware in mind from the start, rather than building for PlayStation first and optimizing later, could result in a weaker experience across the board. His response was direct.

“Our development structure simply doesn’t work that way to begin with.”

When asked whether this could just be standard pre-release talk, Hamaguchi said he wanted to use the moment to actually explain the technical reasons why fans don’t need to worry.

The biggest takeaway from Hamaguchi’s explanation is that the team builds the game for high-end hardware first, specifically a high-spec PC and then scales it down to meet the requirements of lower-powered systems. Assets like textures, meshes, and polygon counts are all created for the best possible environment, then adjusted accordingly.

To put that into perspective, Hamaguchi noted that PS5 and even PS5 Pro are treated as “mid-range platforms” by the studio. Compared to a high-end PC, texture sizes can differ by 1.5 to 2 times, mesh loading by a similar margin, and polygon counts by more than three times. The Steam Deck currently sits at the lowest end of their supported platforms, running at less than half the PS5’s baseline.

Separately, Hamaguchi also addressed the team’s decision to continue using Unreal Engine 4 for Part 3 rather than upgrading to Unreal Engine 5. The reason, he explained, is that the team has spent years heavily customizing the engine to suit their specific needs, making it more practical to stick with what they know and have already tailored. “It’s more beneficial to have something we’re already familiar with and have customized to fit our needs,” he said.

The third entry in the FF7 Remake trilogy does not yet have a confirmed release date.

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