Square Enix is putting its two biggest 2027 releases through the same door. Final Fantasy VII Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed that Kingdom Hearts IV is being developed by Creative Studio 1 - the internal studio Hamaguchi himself runs.
The confirmation came in an interview with Deadline, where Hamaguchi was asked about the year ahead and quoted company president Takashi Kiryu on what Square Enix expects from it.
‘That’s really all on my watch now’
“In terms of Square Enix and 2027, our President, Takashi Kiryu, says that next year is the big fight back for us, where everything turns around,” Hamaguchi said.
“And obviously, between Final Fantasy VII Revelation and Kingdom Hearts 4, those are massive titles that are going to push that. And both are being developed in my own studio, Creative Studio 1. So yeah, I’m really pumped up now for that. That’s really all on my watch now, so I’m going to be the guy who’s pushing all that forward.”
This is an org chart, not a creative takeover
It is worth being precise about what Hamaguchi did and did not say, because the two are easy to blur. He is describing which studio the project sits inside, not who is directing it. Tetsuya Nomura is still directing Kingdom Hearts IV, with Tai Yasue as co-director. Sora’s story has not changed hands.
What has been made explicit is that the same organisation, and the same studio head, is now responsible for shipping both of the games Square Enix is betting its recovery on - within roughly nine months of each other. That is a meaningful amount of structural risk concentrated in one place, and it explains why Hamaguchi sounded less like a director in that quote and more like someone doing arithmetic on his own schedule.
The 2027 calendar
Final Fantasy VII Revelation is locked to 8 April 2027, closing out the remake trilogy that started with 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake. Kingdom Hearts IV is currently pencilled in for the second half of the same year, with no firmer date, and is confirmed for Switch 2 alongside PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Hamaguchi has been unusually visible this week. He also addressed why Revelation will not ship complete on a single disc, saying Square Enix would have to compromise “the quality of the final chapter” to make it fit - a statement that landed badly with the part of the audience that had already decided physical releases were being quietly abandoned.
Why ‘fight back’ is the word being used
Kiryu’s phrasing is worth sitting with. Companies that are comfortable do not describe an upcoming year as a fight back - they describe it as momentum. Square Enix has spent the last few years restructuring, writing down projects that did not work, and publicly committing to a smaller number of bigger bets rather than a wide spread of mid-tier releases.
What 2027 represents, then, is the first year where that strategy actually has to produce results in the shape of shipped games. Both of them are sequels to properties with enormous installed audiences, both are multiplatform including Switch 2, and both are being made by the same internal studio. If they land, the restructuring narrative writes itself. If either slips - and RPGs of this size slip routinely - the other one is carrying the year alone.
What Creative Studio 1 has on its plate
Creative Studio 1 is the team that has shepherded the Final Fantasy VII remake project through Remake and Rebirth, and Revelation is the chapter that has to stick the landing on a trilogy people have been arguing about since 2020. Adding Kingdom Hearts IV to the same studio’s output is not a small operational change.
In practice, large Square Enix projects share technology, outsourcing pipelines and specialist staff across teams, so “same studio” does not mean the same people are doing both jobs in sequence. It does mean the same leadership is accountable for both schedules, the same internal resources are being allocated between them, and any slippage on one is a problem the other feels. Hamaguchi’s “all on my watch now” is a fairly direct acknowledgement of that.
Nomura, the anime, and a leak nobody wanted
On the Kingdom Hearts side, Nomura recently confirmed that the announced Kingdom Hearts anime series is genuinely in production and that he has been consulting closely with its scenario team, and where needed its art team. “I cannot say anything more at this moment, but the single piece of key art released serves as a hint,” he said. “Please let your imagination run wild as you await further updates.”
Less welcome: a mass Steam achievements leak earlier this week appears to have pushed full achievement lists for unreleased PC games onto the internet, Kingdom Hearts IV and Persona 6 among them. Achievement lists are one of the more reliable accidental spoiler vectors in the business, because they tend to name bosses, locations and story beats in plain text. If you intend to go into either game clean, this is a good week to be careful about what you scroll past.
