Hidden Final Fantasy 16 profile in latest Nvidia driver has fans hyping themselves up for a surprise Gamescom PC launch

We've been hearing about the PC version of Final Fantasy 16 for months and months now—Square Enix has confirmed it's coming, but "when" has been the big question. Fans on Resetera and Reddit now think the answer might be soon, because the latest Nvidia driver update, released today, slipped in a GameReady profile for Final Fantasy 16.

While you won't find any mention of Final Fantasy in the release notes for driver 560.81, a Redditor keeping track of changes in Nvidia's driver updates pointed out that the latest release includes profiles for Final Fantasy 16, a Final Fantasy 16 demo, and Once Human, the latest survival game hit on Steam.

Comment from r/nvidia

I updated to the latest driver and confirmed all three are present when using the Nvidia Control Panel's custom 3D settings feature. Nvidia works closely with big game developers to integrate their driver features and make sure the games run well on Nvidia graphics cards, and for a big release like Final Fantasy 16 will often push a driver update to users close to release date. The marquee game for this driver release is Hunt: Showdown 1896, for example, a major update to Hunt which is due out on August 15.

That certainly doesn't guarantee Final Fantasy 16 is launching on PC soon, but fans have noted that head producer Yoshi-P will be in attendance at Gamescom, with the Opening Night Live ceremony just two weeks away on August 20. There were quite a few announcements at last year's ceremony, so it doesn't seem too far-fetched that Square Enix could pop by and help ONL host Geoff Keighley drop a surprise release for the PC version during the event.

Final Fantasy 16 Nvidia driver control panel — (Image credit: Future)

The presence of a FF16 demo in the driver profile list does also raise the possibility that Square Enix plans to launch a slice of the game first, with the full release coming a bit later. The PlayStation 5 demo released about 10 days before official launch was a big hit, though reviews of the full game were more tempered, praising the boss fights but criticizing the thinner storytelling and RPG mechanics.

Presumably Square Enix isn't making any significant changes to either for the PC release, but we might know for sure in a couple weeks. Hopefully it's not the disappointment Final Fantasy 7 Remake's port proved to be.

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Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).