But you’ll have to import it if you’re in the West
It only recently dawned upon me just how old the Kingdom Hearts franchise really is. I recall being so excited for the first release in the series when I was a child, enamoured with the prospect of fighting alongside Donald Duck and Goofy in an action RPG. At the time, I was blissfully unaware of just how horrifyingly complex the series would later become.
While I never did manage to pick up the second game in the series or any of the releases that came after, I do have quite a fondness for that first game.
Next year, the series will be celebrating its 15th anniversary. In order to celebrate it (or to cash in on it, depending on your levels of cynicism), Square Enix has partnered up with Sony to produce a run of limited edition consoles that have been designed after the long-running RPG franchise. On a related note; dear god the console is sexy. Just take a look at it:
The console itself is now available for pre-order on Sony’s Japanese online store and will cost ¥33,980 ($300 USD approx.) for the 500GB model, or ¥38,980 ($340 USD approx.) if you want to bump that disk space up to 1TB. Of course, PS4 hard drives are entirely user-replaceable, so even if you buy the 500GB console and then later come to regret not buying the higher-capacity version, it’s possible to buy 2.5” HDD/SSD/SSHD and upgrade the machine’s storage yourself.
Yeah, you will have to import it if you’re in the West. Thankfully, the PS4 isn’t region-restricted, so the biggest issue with picking one of these up lies with the import costs.
As well as sporting a customised outer shell, the device will come pre-installed with a Kingdom Hearts-inspired theme for the console’s home screen. Its official release date will be on January 12, which coincides with the Japanese launch of Kingdom Hearts 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue. The compilation of games will launch in the rest of the world on January 24, by the way.
One thing that I’m not a fan of is that — like the Fate/Extella or Final Fantasy XV PS4 consoles — this machine is clearly a Slim unit, rather than the more powerful Pro hardware. As we’re already seeing right now, there are games on the market that currently have, or may soon include, tangible performance improvements on the PS4 Pro when compared to its slimmer and less powerful counterpart.
For those who currently own a PS4, it’s also a lot easier to justify the purchase of a new console if it is technically superior to the hardware you already own. All in all, I really feel like Sony’s decision to favour the PS4 Slim over the Pro when producing special edition consoles is somewhat of a wasted opportunity.
Still, you can’t argue with the console’s damn good looks. Did I mention that this console is sexy? Because it kind of is.
Kingdom Hearts 15th Anniversary Edition PS4 [PlayStation Blog via Gematsu]
