In late March, Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy XVI has gone gold. Despite being nearly three months ahead of the release date, the team had hoped to avoid releasing a day one patch. However, following the release of the game’s demo, Square Enix has been responsive to feedback, leading to the decision to release a day one patch. This patch is designed to address certain bugs that occur “under very specific circumstances”, optimize performance, and correct some minor text errors. The team apologized for having to release a day one patch, which has become pretty typical with the industry these days.
If you’ve preordered the digital version of the game, the patch will automatically download and update before its release. This means you won’t have to wait until the game’s release date to download the patch. The team also emphasized that people who don’t have an internet connection and are unable to download the patch will still be able to play the game and these issues being addressed are minor and not critical. In other words, it’s not very likely you’ll run into the crash issue since it’s a very rare case.
The team is also exploring ways to address complaints regarding motion blur experienced in the demo, potentially by adding a toggle to entirely disable this feature. That will, however, unlikely be ready for the game’s release on June 22.