One of Square Enix's crown gaming jewels is the Final Fantasy franchise, and while the Japanese developer has been generous with trailers, screenshots and betas for the upcoming Final Fantasy XV, a release date still remains a mystery. Thankfully though, Gamespot has a reprieve, reporting that the game will arrive before the start of 2017. Gamespot had the news confirmed to them by Final Fantasy XV's director, Hajime Tabata.

Tabata told Gamespot, "at the very least, I can tell you that it isn't going to be released this year. I think we'll be able to tell you when we're making the announcement around PAX Prime, at the end of this month." He added, "we can certainly say to people: it's not going to be 2017. It's going to be before that."

As such, it appears as if Final Fantasy will launch on PS4 and Xbox One (PC unconfirmed yet) sometime in 2016. While this might not placate some, it does mean that Square Enix's development of the game is on track, and now, hopefully no delays will be announced (knock on wood).

While 2016 is still some way off, click on the recently released Final Fantasy XV - Dawn trailer below for a little respite.