Service will be ending in January 2023
Less than a year of being released Square Enix has today announced that its mobile battle royale game Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier will be shutting down on January 11th 2023. Announced on the game’s website and via Twitter to the public Square Enix has apologised saying they were unable to deliver the service they wished despite best efforts to provide the game with constant updates during its release.
Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier was released in November 2021 and was their attempt at the battle royale genre alongside popular games such as Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Square Enix are no strangers to dabbling into other genres using their own brand, we’ve had Dragon Quest Builders inspired by games such as Minecraft and racing games with Chocobos and other well-known Final Fantasy characters which have all done incredibly well. Many people including myself felt the game would have done better if it saw a PC/Console release as well as Mobile but it never happened.
The blog post reads “It is with a heavy heart that we are announcing the end of service for Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier. We will be ending service at 07:00 UTC on January 11, 2023. Despite all our efforts to bring you regular updates with fresh and exciting content, we haven’t been able to deliver the experience that we were hoping to, and that you all deserve, so we have made the extremely tough decision to end service for Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier. We would like to thank you all for supporting us over the past year. Although there is only a little less than 3 months until the service ends, we will continue to make updates during this time, so we hope you will continue to enjoy Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier until the very end.”
It is incredibly sad when a live service is no longer feasible but even more so when it happens after such a short life span. Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier definitely had the potential to be huge but I think being limited to a phone game it struggled with performance and input issues and alienated a lot of potential players. Ever Crisis another mobile game is expected to release sometime in the future which will hopefully be a success for Square Enix, meanwhile console users can look forward to Crisis Core Reunion out in December and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth the second part of the Remake series due late next year or early 2024.
