Four Years, Two Trailers. Square Enix Rethinks Reveals

Square Enix says it's "revisiting" how early it announces games, which is a polite way of acknowledging what Kingdom Hearts fans have known for years: the company's reveal strategy has been broken for the better part of a decade. Kingdom Hearts 4 was first shown in April 2022. In the four years since, it has received exactly one additional trailer. Two trailers in four years. That's not a marketing campaign; that's a missing persons case.

The admission came during a transcript of Square Enix's annual shareholders' meeting, where a shareholder directly asked about the "long window" between announcement and release for mainline Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles, arguing that extended silences cause "consumer enthusiasm to cool." Square Enix agreed, calling it an "issue" and a "challenge," then confirmed it is actively rethinking its approach. As evidence of the new philosophy, the company pointed to Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World, noting that its announcement won't be far from its actual launch. The company also called it "vital" to improve marketing so that player interest doesn't evaporate between a reveal and a release date.

Kingdom Hearts, Exhibit A

Kingdom Hearts is the franchise that makes this problem impossible to ignore. Kingdom Hearts 3 was announced in 2013 and didn't ship until 2019. Six years of waiting, punctuated by sporadic trailers that each generated a burst of excitement followed by months of nothing. Kingdom Hearts 4 is tracking the same pattern, and I'm not sure a single shareholder question is enough to break the cycle. Square Enix has a structural habit of treating game reveals like event announcements rather than the start of a sustained marketing push, and that habit runs across its biggest franchises.

Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have the same problem. Dragon Quest 12: Beyond Dreams was announced in 2021, and as I covered recently, Square Enix dodged a shareholder question about its development troubles entirely. When a company won't even discuss a game it revealed five years ago, the reveal itself starts looking like a liability rather than an asset. Announcing a game before you have a clear release window doesn't build hype; it builds fatigue. Every E3-era publisher learned this lesson at some point. Square Enix is arriving late to class.

The real test is Kingdom Hearts 4 itself. Both it and Dragon Quest 12 recently received new trailers, which could suggest they're closer to release than the years of silence have implied. But Square Enix has trained its audience to expect long waits, and undoing that conditioning takes more than one shareholders' meeting transcript. If Kingdom Hearts 4 launches in 2027 with a proper marketing ramp, I'll believe the strategy has actually changed. If we're still counting trailers on one hand by 2028, this was just a nice answer to a shareholder's question.