It looks like you’re going to be waiting even longer than we originally feared for the next Kingdom Hearts. A new leak suggests the Kingdom Hearts 3 release date is set for the end of 2018, which is quite a wait.
A well-known and usually accurate Square Enix insider called Jose Alamo has tweeted that the Kingdom Hearts 3 release date is now targeting a late 2018 release thanks to a series of content cuts.
Si todo sigue el plan previsto, habrá tráiler de KH3 en el E3 y el juego saldrá en 2018. Saldrá en 2018, aunque no esté terminado.
— José Álamo (@Jose_Strife) May 8, 2017
That roughly translates to: “If everything goes according to plan, there will be a KH3 trailer at E3 and the game will be released in 2018. It will be released in 2018, even if it is not finished.”
Unfortunately, that last part doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence and seeing as it’s already been nearly four years since the game was first announced there’s certainly a lot of expectation. It doesn’t seem like Kingdom Hearts 3 development is going very well at all.
Apparently, director Tetsuya Nomura is quite the perfectionist, which has added time to the development cycle. Plus, Final Fantasy 15‘s troubled production time has also added stress to the already under pressure Osaka-based studio.
The game was first announced back at E3 2013 and since then we’ve seen very little of the game except for an eight-minute gameplay demo and some new characters, including Baymax from Big Hero 6 and Tangled‘s Rapunzel.
Square Enix has always said both Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Final Fantasy 7 Remake would arrive sometime in 2018, so we knew it was going to be a long time before we could play either. But if KH3 really is coming out at the end of next year, you could see a lot of unhappy fans in the near future.
Hopefully, both titles will make an appearance at E3 in June and appease us a little until that 2018 release date. We can but hope.