In a recent blog post,Square Enixhas announced that the company’s Japanese development team and other staff members will not be visiting PAX East this year. This decision was reportedly made due to the spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus that is currently spreading through Southeast Asia, and has already caused other companies likePlayStation to skip PAX.
WhileSquare Enixwill still have a presence at the convention, it will only be the American team that will be making an appearance. Unfortunately, this does mean that a number of events, including panels, signings, and fan gatherings, will be cancelled for PAX East, with the company’s presence being reduced to a booth with theFinal Fantasy 14Ruby Weapon Challenge.
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The biggest cancellation is easily the panel session that was meant to give fans a look behind the scenes of the development ofFinal Fantasy 14. However, while the panel won’t be proceeding as planned, Square Enix will instead host a live stream on February 18th, at 8PM ET on theFinal Fantasy 14Twitch channel that will likely cover similar material to what was expected at the panel. This wouldn’t be the first time that Square Enix has usedlivestreams to make announcementsor communicate with fans, and depending on its success, this may be the way that the company moves forward with future community interactions.
As the community may be aware, COVID-19 (also known as “novel coronavirus”) is spreading within the East Asia region. Taking into consideration the current situation within the region, sadly SQUARE ENIX has decided to cancel the PAX East attendance of staff who would be travelling from the Japan offices. This difficult decision was based on our desire to prevent any potential spread of the virus and to prioritize the health and safety of our team and our fans.
It appears that Square Enix’s main focus this year at PAX was intended to beFinal Fantasy 14, so anyone disappointing that they might be missing out onFinal Fantasy 7orOutridersnewswill likely still find whatever was planned at the booth. From the announcement, and the updated PAX schedule, there is still anOutriderspanel, likely due to the development team, People Can Fly, coming from Poland rather than Japan. Similarly, there will also be a playable demo ofFinal Fantasy 7, and considering that the game was originally expected to release days after PAX, there likely isn’t much that Square Enix had planned to reveal.
This isn’t the only company to avoid PAX East, among other conventions, due to the spread of the Coronavirus. However, it appears that the worry from Square Enix is more on the idea of keeping isolated as to not potentially spread the disease, considering where the virus originated and the region it has spread to sense. There will likely be more cancelled programs and announcements in the future as theCoronavirus continues to affecting gamingand other industries due to fears of spread and infection.
Final Fantasy 14is available now for PC and PS4.
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