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Kingdom Hearts III was officially announced at Sony’s E3 Press Conference a few weeks ago. Fans, who have been salivating for a sequel since the release of Kingdom Hearts II back in 2006, delighted at the news. Following the trailer, Sony's Adam Boyes retook the stage to confirm that the title will be headed to the PlayStation 4. Boyes went on to publicize that Square-Enix had one more gift for PlayStation fans-- that Final Fantasy XIV will be released exclusively on the PlayStation 3 and 4. This exclusivity of FFXIV led some to wonder about the exclusivity status of Kingdom Hearts III. The following day at Square-Enix’s private conference, they officially confirmed that the titles Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy XV (formally, Final Fantasy Versus XIII) would see release on both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

For most, the announcement was small news—at the very least, it was overshadowed by the enthusiasm for the upcoming games. However, a small but rather vocal outlet of fans has spoken out against the news. There will be—and have already been—arguments made that the game will be worse off because of the decision to make the game multiplatform. Arguments have been made that it does not even make sense for the 'third' game in the Kingdom Hearts series to appear on the Xbox One, when the titles have only been on either Sony systems or Nintendo handhelds. But really, Kingdom Hearts III appearing on two platforms is no big deal.

Learning from Last-Gen

This past generation of consoles has shown that 3rd party publishers, such as Square-Enix, will present their games to whichever console is a viable platform to make profit. Last generation, both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 sold similar figures at about 75 million units each. There was such a large potential market, as well as a substantial increase in development costs associated with the previous generation of consoles, that it would be a mistake to not bring games to multiple platforms. This had already worked in favor of both Xbox and PlayStation fans as previously exclusive franchises were now shared between platforms—Xbox fans could now indulge in the Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy series, and PlayStation fans could sample from games made by Bioware and Bethesda.

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Admittedly, some of these once-exclusive franchises did receive poor ports when moving onto an additional console: Final Fantasy XIII ran at a lower resolution on the Xbox version, with missing shadow effects and less-than-stellar cut scenes; Bethesda was infamous for its failed attempt to keep the PS3 version of their 2011 hit, Skyrim, performing at a playable frame-rate after extended hours of play.

These titles, though notable, do not in themselves suggest that multiplatform is a mistake. When developers are given the time for console optimization, multiplatform titles are at parity with one another. Dead Space 3, for example, is near identical between the 360 and the PS3. The games themselves do not suffer as a result of being multiplatform. Ports to other platforms may not be up to par, but the main console that the game was developed for does not suffer and, ultimately, fulfills the developer’s vision.

And still, despite this cross-over of titles and the 360/PS3 consoles earning the moniker of “The HD Twins,” Microsoft and Sony's own development studios, with emphasis on their platform features, still gave the consoles unique identities.

Similar Hardware

Stepping into this coming generation, it seems that the situation will be relatively the same for each console. Despite the backlash against Microsoft for their Anti-Used Game and Internet-Required policies, the reversal of those restrictions, in combination with exclusive titles such as Dead Rising 3 and Titan Fall, guarantees that the PlayStation 4 will not leave the competition in the dust or have a market dominance that the PS2 saw. The Xbox One has at least a fighting chance.

The safe bet is that each console is going to have a comparatively similar install base--much like the current gen. Publishers have had a generation to create games on multiple platforms, and to learn from their mistakes. Furthermore, the hardware between the two consoles will be far more similar than the previous generation. Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will have the same fundamental x86 architecture and both will have a CPU and GPU created by AMD.

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The biggest differences between the two consoles lie in their GPU and RAM. The PS4 slightly overtakes the Xbox One in terms of GPU capabilities. Further, the PS4 has 8GB of high bandwidth GDDR5 RAM, whereas the Xbox One has 8GB of DDR3 RAM with an additional 32MB chunk of eSRAM to close the gap between the bandwidth speeds of the two memory types.

All in all, however, the consoles are evenly matched. Multiplatform games may look and perform better on the PS4, but the discrepancies between the two systems are not so large to where there would be significant downgrading. Having both systems employ a x86 architecture means that there is very little cost in bringing a game over to an additional platform--certainly much less than the last generation, when developers had to port between the two very different architectures of PS3's Cell and the PowerPC environment of the 360.

Kingdom Hearts III

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Focusing on the development of Kingdom Hearts III, Nomura has stated that it is being developed using Square-Enix's Luminous Engine, which was specifically designed to create next-gen games for both the PS4 and the Xbox One. From the very beginning, the game has undergone development with multiplatform in mind. Being built with the constraints of both systems, nothing from the game can possibly be 'sacrificed' as there are no downgrades or compromises to be made.

Even if plans change between now and the game's release so it becomes PlayStation 4 exclusive, the game would hardly benefit. The difference of power in the two systems is not great enough to affect feature sets or gameplay options, so Kingdom Hearts III will be the same in those respects regardless of console exclusivity. And let's be honest, as beautiful as the games are, Kingdom Hearts is not known for pushing millions of polygons. The Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMIX looks gorgeous today, even though the source games are PS2 titles, because they’re being rendered at a higher resolution, with some re-texturing. Kingdom Hearts III is never going to be a game that will push the limits of the PlayStation 4's hardware, so it stands to reason that the title wouldn't need any aspects to be removed or tweaked to accommodate the Xbox One.

Bottom line, the game is finally being made after all these years. It is still coming out for the PlayStation 4 and it will more than likely perform better than its Xbox One counterpart, so why even be disappointed? If anything, this only means that more people will join the Kingdom Hearts fan base, which is a great thing.