It has nearly been two years since Kingdom Hearts 4 has been announced, yet no new information has been released since the initial trailer. Continue on to read our theories as to when it might come out, and our reasons for why it might do so.
Kingdom Hearts 4 Release Date and Time
Optimistically Between 2025 to 2026
Kingdom Hearts(KH) games and their release dates are hard to pin down, and I admit that as a fan of the series. Anyone unfamiliar with KH could look at the gaps between KH1, KH2, and KH3 and point out the massive distance between KH2 in 2005 and KH3 in 2019. What’s abstracted from someone looking from outside is that between KH2 and KH3, a whopping total of 7 Kingdom Hearts games were actually released. Sure, two of those are collections of remasters, but they still contain new plot elements instrumental to the running narrative between the titles.
These games, though not numbered entries, continually built to the release of KH3. Because of this, playing them became crucial to understand the ongoing plot before the finale of the Dark Seeker Arc in KH3. Therefore, seeing as series creator and director Tetsuya Nomura loves splitting the narrative across multiple titles, we can be sure to expect that to some degree on the build to KH4.
However, fans might not have to wait as long as a gap like before, as we predict that the game could come out as soon as 2025.
Why Kingdom Hearts 4 is Coming Sooner Than We Think
In January 2020, a year after the release of KH3, the game received the Re Mind DLC which further explored what happened after the events of the main title. It prominently featured Yozora, the protagonist of a game within the game, who looked eerily similar to Noctis from Nomura’s previous project Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which would later be renamed as Final Fantasy 15. The link between Sora, Yozora, and Noctis looks to be the next main arc intended for the series, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.
After Re Mind, Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory came out in November 2020, which was a rhythm game that starred Kairi. Though it was a large departure from the series’ action gameplay, it still held crucial plot elements for the story, as is usually the case for any KH titles.
Since then, there has been no new major KH title that has been released. Though, a new mobile game entitled KH Missing-Link was announced preceding the reveal of KH4 in its 20th anniversary, and it has been said that the game will ALSO feature events and plot points building up to the main story (Thanks Nomura-san!).
From initial glance, it certainly looks like we’re repeating history once again, where the buildup for the next numbered KH title will be relegated across multiple games. However, one counterpoint to this assumption is that the landscape of gaming has drastically changed since those times, and that Square Enix can no longer afford to continually make "spin-offs" like back then. Some of the titles between KH2 and KH3 were developed for multiple gaming platforms ranging from the Nintendo DS, the PSP, the Nintendo 3DS, and even mobile.
Today, the gaming industry has changed. We can imagine that a KH game that was to be released exclusively on, let’s say, the Nintendo Switch, might pose a huge risk and challenge to the franchise. Game development costs and duration have tremendously increased, and it would pose to be more profitable for a company to focus on big titles, instead of multiple smaller ones.
This line of thinking is verified by current Square Enix President Takashi Kiryu on a recent Financial Results Briefing session, where he stated that going forward, the company will look to slim down on trying to produce more titles. He acknowledged the need for Square Enix to strengthen its internal development teams for better concentration on current and newer projects.
This certainly hints at the prospect that Nomura may no longer be able to "delay" a numbered KH anymore, as it seems like all hands WILL be on deck for Kingdom Hearts 4’s development. It’s safe to assume that KH4 started right after the conclusion of KH3’s development in 2020 after the release of Re Mind, and so a 2025-2026 release year would certainly be plausible to achieve.
It also needs to be noted that KH3 had to transition from the in-house Luminous Engine to Unreal Engine 4 in the middle of development, enlarging the gap between its announcement in 2013 to its release in 2019. As KH4 is being developed by Unreal Engine 5, it will no doubt be much less turbulent as KH3’s troubled process, which makes a 2025-2026 release period very doable.
