Kingdom Hearts 4 was supopossed to release today

[Liodin]

I'm sure most of you remember that two years ago the biggest leak in the history of video games happened.

The Nvidia GeForce Now database leak.

And among the large list of games, Kingdom Hearts 4 was one of them, with a release date of 2023-09-30.

Now in retrospect, we know that the list was 100% real, and the release dates were accurate enough for the games closer to the leak, but for the more distant releases, the ones that are being released now or haven't even been announced, they were just placeholders that give us a glimpse of a release window that the developers were aiming for at the moment.

So with this date in mind, do you expect to see Kingdom Hearts 4 next year? 2025? 2026?!

Personally I think it will come out in early 2025. An internal delay of a year and a half seems reasonable to me.

List of GeForce games which have a future release dates has been reportedly leaked. Rumor

Take it with a huge grain of salt because a lot are obviously placeholders, but I believe it gives us a good window of release dates. Some interesting stuff in here: The page has been taken down Backup: The backup seems to still be up Some notable games, not all games are included, just some...

www.resetera.com

 

[Luminary]

I think if there was any meaning to these dates, they were pie in the sky dates for the absolute earliest the game could release. Hence the “Earliest Street date” label. Some are clearly way off too like FFIX remake and DQXII. So it’s hard to put any stock in them. 9/30 is also the end of a fiscal quarter which is frequently used for placeholder dates similar to 12/31. So I don’t think this was ever a legit date personally.

That said, I’m also thinking early 2025. Based on FFVII Rebirth’s nine month marketing campaign from launch window reveal to release, I could see KH4 getting its re-reveal in March/April with a winter ‘25 launch window. Marketing campaign could look something like this:

March/April ‘24: Re-reveal around the 2nd anniversary of the first KH4 trailer. Announce early 2025 launch. First Disney world reveal. Missing Link release date announcement for Summer 24.

June ‘24: Trailer at Summer Games Fest, world reveal. More focus will be on Missing Link with a launch trailer and release. (Pokémon Go released in summer, so I think it makes sense for ML to do the same.)

August ‘24: Release date announcement at D23 along with world reveal. Definitely revealing Star Wars if they haven’t already by then. For those who aren’t aware, D23 is set to be much bigger next year. Instead of D23 Expo, it will now be known as D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event. The biggest panels are being moved from Hall D23 to the Honda Center for double the seating capacity. It’d be a huge missed opportunity to not show something there.

September ‘24: Playable demo at TGS with another world reveal trailer. Some Quadratum and Star Wars gameplay for the demos.

October-November: Appearances at smaller conventions with the demos. Maybe a trailer or two revealing more worlds depending how many there will be and/or an event for content creators to check out the game. Game goes gold.

December ‘24: Final trailer at the Game Awards. (Let’s pretend Rebirth is nominated for GOTY and the KH4 trailer here reveals that Cloud and Sephiroth will both appear as a way to hype it up.) Could also appear at Jump Festa.

January ‘25: Game releases either 1/24/25 or 1/31/25.

If this sounds familiar at all, it is similar to what 2018 was like for KH3 with the release date on 1/25/19. It worked well for KH3, so why not follow the same track?

Regardless of when it releases, I want there to be a relatively short and fast paced marketing campaign once it’s revealed again. Just like we’re getting with Rebirth. Nothing drawn out where we get so many trailers that the whole game is basically spoiled like KH3.