A wealth of new information on Final Fantasy XVI is making the rounds courtesy of a new media tour being fielded to the press following the release of the recent “Ambition” trailer. Producer Naoki Yoshida and director Hiroshi Takai shared a number of specific details on development status, as well as when we can expect a finalized release date.

First, FFXVI is about 95% complete, according to Takai in an interview with Famitsu translated by the folks at Gematsu. “Currently, we’re playing through the game day after day, ironing out any rough patches, and brushing up some performance and rendering issues. After that comes bug fixes.”

Yoshida reflected on some of his own experiences with game development, citing having grown accustomed to the development environment for online games, he was a little surprised how quickly the team had to go gold. “If you consider the production of physical discs, shipping them worldwide… all of that takes several months of physical time after going gold. So when we say development is 95% complete, some might say, ‘well then release it immediately,’ but that’s the reality of the situation…”

As the game nears completion, so does the expected release date announcement. Thus far we know a Summer 2023 release is still on target, however, Yoshida noted that we’ll know an exact date very soon. “We’re planning to put out even more information before the end of the year, so I think we’ll be able to tell you at that time,” Yoshida said. He also stressed that fans shouldn’t worry as it won’t be any later than that Summer.

Speaking further to 4Gamer, Yoshida said a new trailer will be released before this year’s end and around that timing is when they’ll be able to share the final launch date. He also told Dengeki that a demo is planned to release at some point.

Final Fantasy XVI is currently in development for PlayStation 5.