Square Enix Canceled Octopath Traveler 2 On Xbox After “Observing The Sales Of Other Titles”

It has been a rough week for Xbox as of late as soon after the fiasco regarding Quantum Break, it seems there is yet another hurdle slowly coming up for the company. In an interview by Push Square with the producer of Octopath Traveler 2, Masashi Takahashi, he mentioned that it was decided internally to not release the game on more platforms after Square Enix observed the sales of other titles. 

When asked if there were any plans to release the first game on PlayStation consoles, Takahashi-san responded: 

We did look into it. However, we wanted to focus all our efforts on developing Octopath Traveler II and this also links into your next question about whether you need to have played the first game to enjoy Octopath Traveler II or not.

To reduce misunderstandings about this, we decided against trying to align a PlayStation release of Octopath Traveler with the release of Octopath Traveler II.”

For the uninitiated, Octopath Traveler 2 was released back in February on Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and the Nintendo Switch, but not on the Xbox. This caught players by surprise as the first game did, in fact, release on Xbox consoles. What’s ironic is that while Xbox got Octopath Traveler 1, the PlayStation did not. That makes it so that the only platforms that have both games in the series happen to be the PC and the Nintendo Switch. 

Octopath Traveler 2 is not the last Square Enix title that hasn’t made its way to Xbox. The console release of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection was just announced a few hours ago by Square Enix and is launching on just about every single console you can think of except the Xbox. And when I say any console you can think of, I do mean that from Androids to iPhones to even the freaking Amazon Fire tablet!

Could this be a sign of a dwindling partnership between Microsoft and Square Enix? Well, all the signs do lead to that conclusion. Even after the end of its Sony exclusivity, Final Fantasy 7 Remake was not released for Xbox consoles and is only available on PC and PlayStation. If this does happen to be true, this could potentially be a major blow to Xbox’s output.