Final Fantasy 15 game director Hajime Tabata announces that the highly anticipated game will finally launch at some point by the end of 2016 for PS4 and Xbox One.

2016 is an exciting year to be a gamer. There's plenty of new IP to be enthused about, as well as new entries in well-established franchises. In regards to the latter, gamers can now rest easy knowing that the long-awaited Final Fantasy 15 is guaranteed to release by the end of the year for PS4 and Xbox One after a decade in development.

This news comes straight from game director Hajime Tabata, who announced Final Fantasy 15's 2016 release window in a New Year's blog post. In the same post, Tabata confirmed that the game was in its final phase of development, which should come as no surprise considering Final Fantasy 15 is now playable from start to finish.

Tabata also expressed gratitude to fans for their support over the years, dating back to the days when the game was known as Final Fantasy Versus 13. Fans aided in the development of Final Fantasy 15 by playing the Episode Duscae demo, which offered the developers at Square Enix valuable feedback, something else that Tabata is grateful for.

Even so, there are those that have reservations and doubts that Final Fantasy 15 will be able to deliver. After all, Final Fantasy 14 originally launched as a broken mess, and Final Fantasy 13 did not earn the same acclaim as its predecessors. However, Tabata has reassured fans that his team is going all out for FF15.

"I vow to you all that every member in the team will do their best to the very last possible moment taking responsibility and pride in their craft. We will do everything we can do to finish FFXV to create an experience we are incredibly proud of and one that you will enjoy and treasure."

Having confirmation that Final Fantasy 15 will finally hit store shelves in 2016 is nice, but we still aren't sure when exactly fans can expect to get their hands on the game. That being said, Square Enix previously stated that a Final Fantasy 15 release date would be announced in March, so we should know when FF15 is launching in just a couple of months.

In the meantime, the next wave of information on Final Fantasy 15 will be available much sooner than that. In fact, Square Enix is planning a Final Fantasy 15 Active Time Report for this month, which will unveil new battle footage, more details on the antagonistic Nilfheim Empire, and more. The exact day of this Active Time Report has yet to be announced, but expect Square Enix to clarify soon.

Are you excited to play Final Fantasy 15 this year? Have you been following the game since its original announcement in 2006? When do you expect it to actually release? Leave us a comment below and give us your thoughts on Final Fantasy 15 and it's extraordinarily long development cycle.

Final Fantasy 15 is due for release at some point this year for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Source: GameSpot