When are we expecting news?

[Luminary]

Yeah honestly I'm just startin' to think the whole "When KH4" guessing game is gettin a bit outta hand when people are now trying to add merch lotteries to the equation and it just kinda...has me miffed lol

Yeah these are just going to happen whenever the game releases or there’s a major series event like the anniversary. It’s not like they’re thinking, “Oh we’re doing a lottery this year for ML; guess we have to wait two more years for KH4.”

Sadly, if you have 100k followers, your word gets taken as gospel by some.

 

[KeybladeLordSora]

I feel like any date after 2025 would def be an issue too.

For...various reasons.

 

[Chie]

meanwhile in 2040, in the kingdom hearts 6 release guessing thread: "square enix is already releasing a game in 2045 so it would be business suicide to release kh6 then. plus kh6 would only have had 7 years of development time, which isn't nearly enough time to make a quality game"

 

[Luminary]

meanwhile in 2040, in the kingdom hearts 6 release guessing thread: "square enix is already releasing a game in 2045 so it would be business suicide to release kh6 then. plus kh6 would only have had 7 years of development time, which isn't nearly enough time to make a quality game"

Don’t be silly. Their games will be made entirely by AI by then because people complained about the developers taking too long and we’ll get new KH games left and right. We’ll just need to ignore that Sora has 12 fingers and three eyes.

 

[HakaishinChampa]

Like TheGamersJoint said, I'd be fine with another game other than Missing Link in 2025.

If KH4 were to come out in 2026, if there's another game to hold us over than a mobile game that'll rarely get updates, that'd be nice.

2020 to now felt really fast though so maybe 2 years isn't that long of a wait.

We could get a few trailers this year still, we're just playing the waiting game.

May 4th (Star Wars Day) could have a KH4 Star Wars world announcement akin to Big Hero 6 as an image or a full trailer.

June, Summer Games Fest, likely.

August: Gamescom, it's possible but I don't think they had a trailer since BBS

TGS in September, extremely likely

The Game Awards in December, really likely

I think we can also expect random interviews with Nomura or someone else from Square or Disney mentioning KH4.

 

[KeybladeLordSora]

Why do people always bring up the Game Awards? KH has literally never shown up there in any way in the almost 10 years that the event has been a thing.

The only likely thing to happen at this year's iteration is prolly another overly long acceptance speech.

I'd put Summer Games Fest higher on the likely scale because it's still technically "E3 season" and thus a pretty easy spot for a trailer drop.

 

[Chie]

There's a sense of Game Awards being a major event and also of KH4 being a very major game, but I'm pretty sure the Game Awards crowd would not even applaud for anything Kingdom Hearts related, it's an aggressively "generic western gamer" event.

 

[bambii]

There's a sense of Game Awards being a major event and also of KH4 being a very major game, but I'm pretty sure the Game Awards crowd would not even applaud for anything Kingdom Hearts related, it's an aggressively "generic western gamer" event.

True, but I'm assuming with the inclusion of Star Wars and potentially other big IPs, the series is going to try to expand its audience/reach somewhat. TGA still seems like a strange fit for a re-reveal, though. Maybe a trailer, if it's already been re-revealed by then.

 

[KeybladeLordSora]

True, but I'm assuming with the inclusion of Star Wars and potentially other big IPs, the series is going to try to expand its audience/reach somewhat. TGA still seems like a strange fit for a re-reveal, though. Maybe a trailer, if it's already been re-revealed by then.

They definitely wouldn't wait til December to re-reveal the game with absolutely nothing between now and then.

 

[Luminary]

Why do people always bring up the Game Awards? KH has literally never shown up there in any way in the almost 10 years that the event has been a thing.

The only likely thing to happen at this year's iteration is prolly another overly long acceptance speech.

I'd put Summer Games Fest higher on the likely scale because it's still technically "E3 season" and thus a pretty easy spot for a trailer drop.

The TGA audience has grown a lot since KH3 released. And if they partner with Keighley for SGF, they’d probably be willing to do so for TGA. Especially after Rebirth was one of the highlights of the show this year and they had the Visions of Mana reveal. If they can show JRPG games like Persona and Metaphor ReFantazio, I doubt there would be an issue showing a game with Star Wars in it.

I agree with @bambii that it will depend what point in the marketing they are at. I don’t see it being re-revealed there either, but could definitely see a trailer/theme song reveal if the game were to release in January/February 2025. The timing lines up well with Jump Festa too. The latter usually doesn’t have its own reveals anymore, but they still may have a booth and show recently released trailers.

I fully expect KH4 to have its re-reveal before/when Missing Link releases. That game will perform better if they start hyping up KH4 along with it. Ever Crisis/Rebirth and Nier ReIncarnation/Replicant are two recent examples where they’ve released a mobile game for a franchise relatively close to a major console release from the same series. There’s a good chance they could follow a similar pattern with these two. It’s possible this is even why it has taken longer to get Missing Link when its closed beta was originally scheduled for 2022. They may have intentionally delayed it to get it closer to KH4.

 

[KeybladeLordSora]

By the way we are at approximately one year and nine months since KH4's announcement. About the same amount of time FF16 had from its announcement to its second trailer.

Rebirth was 51 weeks between its announcement and second trailer.

And for the third of Square's "Big Three" franchises just so it ain't left out, Dragon Quest 12 is nearly at three years and iirc only has a logo.

 

[Phoenix]

This is absolutely nothing compared to the wait for KH3. I remember I bought a PS3 for it.

 

[KeybladeLordSora]

This is absolutely nothing compared to the wait for KH3. I remember I bought a PS3 for it.

Ah yes, buying a console for a game that hadn't been announced until 2013.

Imo the "wait" for KH3 pre-2013 shouldn't really count.

 

[Phoenix]

Ah yes, buying a console for a game that hadn't been announced until 2013.

Imo the "wait" for KH3 pre-2013 shouldn't really count.

Uh, I did. I assumed KH3 would come out for PS3 based on the wait between 1 and 2. Well, between CoM and 2, I should say.

 

[Chie]

I am someone who wanted a PS3 as a kid thinking a KH game would surely be on it, so I get what the underlying thought process is, but I think there are a lot of assumptions involved in calling that a "wait for KH3". I think it would have been an entirely logical decision to stop numbering the titles at all, for example, in which case we'd still be waiting.

 

[Launchpad]

I see people bring this up a lot, but to be honest, there are three waits for KH3. The 'soft' wait begins when you finish KH2, with Mickey's letter clearly teasing some grand new adventure. Yes, other games came out in the interim, but none of them were a large budget adventure with numbered title-ass mechanics and, most importantly, Sora, Donald and Goofy going to new Disney worlds. I loved KH2 as a kid so naturally I immediately began to wish for a follow-up, and imagined it appearing on the PS3.

The next wait came much later, when DDD's secret ending message was "This leads to KINGDOM HEARTS III". I don't think that requires too much explanation, but even without that message, DDD was clearly the game meant to establish KH3's premise and set up the final conflict.

Then, at last, came the 'true' wait, when KH3 was announced. That in and of itself was a hefty little wait, wasn't it?? 2013-2019 is no small amount of time. I was a busy little bee in college, and I STILL felt like I was going nuts waiting for that game.

But, overall, I don't really think it's THAT ridiculous to feel like you were 'waiting for KH3' since 2006, nor is it that crazy to have expected the game to drop on KH3. Obviously, things shook out very differently than most expected, and expectations don't warrant petulant, obnoxious reactions, but when we FINALLY got to SDG's new adventure in 2019, I sure as hell felt like I had waited a LONG time.

 

[Phoenix]

Thinking back on it, I don't think any of us expected the game wouldn't come out on PS3 back then, that it would skip a whole generation. It seemed obvious at the time that after a few spin offs, or would come out. That's not what happened in the end, but I don't think any of us predicted the wait.

 

[KeybladeLordSora]

....sorry for my attitude in my last response. ;^^

I for one thought ReCoM was KH3 so I ain't perfect

 

[Liodin]

According to Nvidia's leak the game release was estimated for autumn 2023, and something very bad should have happened for the game to be delayed internally for more than 2 years, and so far nothing points to that being the case.

Now the question is, has KH4 suffered an internal delay due to development issues or simply due to internal scheduling?

You have to understand that companies work by fiscal years, and that they are not going to launch all their flagship products in the same year even if it generates great benefits, because then in the following year the benefits would be lower by comparison and the companies are always looking to report that the current year was better than the previous one.

That's why my bet is that the internal delay is due to the schedule, as we can see by the different games that SE has been releasing during this time.

Also keep in mind that Disney will already have the entire release schedule for all their products, and KH4 may have some worlds to help promote new movies/series or vice versa. And even other products related to KH that Diseny itself wants to launch, since I would be surprised that having an IP with so many fans they are not looking to expand as other companies like Sony or Nintendo are doing.

That's why I expect the re-reveal during the first half of the year and even more trailers in the second half, with a release date of late 2024 / early 2025. Exactly the same as the marketing campaign for their other games, specifically look at the parallels between Ever Crisis/Rebirth and ML/KH4.

 

[Disney Adventurer]

The date in Nvidia's leak was most likely just a placeholder.