How the director of Final Fantasy XV aims to keep players coming back for more

- Hajime Tabata shares his vision for the future of Final Fantasy XV, and his thoughts on the evolving face of the series, in an interview with Polygon. 

After steering Final Fantasy XV through several years of development hell, the game’s director Hajime Tabata has turned his gaze on to the next challenge FFXV must face: finding a way to keep players coming back after they finish the main storyline.

Tabata has several tricks up his sleeve in hopes to accomplish this, and he detailed many of them in a recent interview published by Polygon. The article offers some interesting insight into both the potential future of the Final Fantasy series and the changing world of Japanese game development.

Already, Final Fantasy XV has had its share of DLC announcements and even a timed in-game event, but Tabata hopes to push the game's longevity even further through new content and eventually a new multiplayer feature. Some of his inspirations for future Final Fantasy XV content were even influenced by the actions of Western developers like CD Projekt Red and Rockstar. 

"As you see in games like The Witcher 3 or the GTA series, you have periodic updates, right? That helps satisfy the user base. It gives them new content to enjoy,” explained Tabata. 

“That’s one of the goals for us — not only the main game development, having this big, open world, but also the downloadable content that they have planned for this current year. In a way, because we're putting everything out simultaneously worldwide, it will become kind of a collective experience."

For more of Tabata's thoughts on Final Fantasy XV's development, and his take on both the changing Japanese game market and the Nintendo Switch, check out the full interview on Polygon.