Square Enix has been fairly quiet lately, with announcements about its latest projects being few and far between. However, a few new job postings might be hinting at what the company's development team has in the works. The listings come from Square's Osaka studio with the positions suggesting they'll be working in "HD development" for the Kingdom Hearts series.
The Osaka team has famously taken over as the main group behind some of the most recent Kingdom Hearts releases, including Dream Drop Distance, as well as the series' most recent installment, Kingdom Hearts 3. Therefore, Square Enix hiring through Osaka is a sure sign that development is continuing on the series as a whole.
The job titles themselves don't offer much information as to what the company is moving forward with specifically, but there is room for speculation with postings for UI and effect designers hitting their online job board, along with calls for technical artists. With new positions for designers for "HD development," it's possible that this could mean more HD remasters coming to the series, although Kingdom Hearts' Story So Far collection does have every release leading up to Kingdom Hearts 3 in one form or another. However, since most games, especially within the scope of Kingdom Hearts, are currently being developed in HD from the start, this might be the early stages of putting together the team that will work on the next major release in the series.
It should also be noted that the next confirmed announcement for Kingdom Hearts is the Re Mind DLC last showcased at the Tokyo Game Show, with very little information since then. The only other project currently known within the series is the ongoing Kingdom Hearts Union X mobile game that is still drip feeding bits of lore and is speculated to have an impact on the series going forward. However, with Union X not being from the Osaka team and Re Mind being slated to arrive this winter, it would be fairly late in the development process to be bringing on designers for things like UI and effects, which is already concrete in the former and should already be ready for the latter.
While this might mean more news coming soon from Square Enix about development on Kingdom Hearts 4 delivering on every fan request, there is still the possibility of titles like Re:Coded or 358/2 Days getting full HD releases as opposed to the "movie" forms they currently exist as in the Story so Far collection. There is also the possibility that content from Union X will be brought into HD, similar to the film that accompanied Kingdom Hearts 2.8. With so little to go on, there's not much else to do, but wait and see.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is available now on PS4 and Xbox One.
Source: IGN