26-05-2025:Yoshi-P has walked back on these claims, now confirming that Final Fantasy 16 will have a day one patch.
Our original report from June 21, 2025 follows.
Day-one patches are an expectation at this point. You get off work or home from school excited to boot up the new shiny game, but you have to sit through a download before the pearly gates open. These usually address key performance issues and bugs, ironing out the kinks to ensure a smoother experience from the go, butFinal Fantasy 16is curbing this modern trend. It won’t have a day-one patch.
Everything fromResident Evil 4 RemaketoStar Wars Jedi: Survivorhad a day-one patch this year - evenTears of the Kingdomand, by extension, Nintendo, followed this practice. However, as reported byGame Informer, director Hiroshi Takai claims that because FF16 has been in the oven for so long, with numerous delays, the team is confident about its polish.
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They even recognise that not everybody has the internet speeds to download a day one patch, meaning that not only is the team avoiding one since it simply isn’t needed, but also because they want as many people to try the game on launch as possible. FF16 itself is a huge shift for the series, embracingmore grounded fantasy in-line with Game of Thrones, but it’s also nostalgic in its old out-of-the-box-and-play-straight-away approach. Unless you have a PS5 Digital like me. We still have to wait for it to download.
Takai also told Game Informer that the CBUIII team has been testing FF16 daily to search for bugs to see if anything in the game is explicitly broken, but they came to the conclusion that it should work as expected on launch without the need for any additional downloads. This isn’t to say that there will be no updates in FF16’s future as players are bound to find issues and minor quirks, but when it launches on June 22, we should be in for a polished experience.
Whether this is a trend Square Enix can keep up in future is something we’ll have to wait to find out. It has plans tolaunch bigger games more frequently after FF16, but whether it can juggle both more regular releases and refined experiences is a big question. Especially experiences so refined that day-one patches are ruled out. Again, not even Tears of the Kingdom bucked the trend.
It might be that developing for the PS5 is a big reason for this confidence, as in March, producer Naoki Yoshida said that its “next-gen combat” wasonly possible thanks to current-gen hardwareand, in particular, the PS5’s memory. It might be best to temper expectations for a PC launch.
Next:Final Fantasy 16 Preview - Shaping Up To Be Something Truly Eikonic
