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Have you been cooped up in pandemic mode for the last year and a half like the rest of us? Do you want to get out and see some live Final Fantasy music before everything gets shut down again because we're still not winning against said pandemic? The Final Fantasy VII Remake concert series has an absolute shedload of dates coming up in North America that might be just for you. Check out this big list:

• August 27/28: Fort Worth, Texas
• October 16: Orlando
• October 23: Los Angeles
• November 12: Boston
• November 20: St. Petersburg, Florida
• November 27/28: Honolulu
• December 28/29: Atlanta
• January 28, 2022: Nashville
• February 6: Chicago (with a matinee and evening show)
• February 12: Montréal
• February 25: Omaha
• March 2/3: Toronto
• March 5: Guadalajara
• March 18/19: Denver
• March 23: Phoenix
• TBA: Two dates at Carnegie Hall, New York

Most of these dates are already on sale or will be on sale in the next few weeks. So, if one of these dates are near you, go check it out now!

Also, with Final Fantasy IV celebrating its 30th birthday this year, Square Enix have also announced a new vinyl album featuring original tracks and new arrangements of the classic Uematsu tracks. I'm not sure if they have sold through their quantity for pre-order already, but the official site is currently showing a "Waitlist" button. While I personally feel that Final Fantasy IV has one of the better overall soundtracks in the series - come watch me also gush about Celtic Moon in Discord sometime - the $40 price point for vinyl plus digital download dissuades me just a bit. The album is tentatively slated to release on August 25, so if you manage to get a copy please come let us know how it is!

Gematsu brings us news this morning that the long-assumed version of Final Fantasy VII Remake for PCs might well be on the way. Via Wario64 on Twitter, it looks like the Epic Game Store JSON configuration data contains an entry for a game called "Pineapple QA" that is in reality a placeholder for FF7R.

The screenshot does not indicate whether the game is the original, or the Intergrade edition including the Yuffie episode, though if this information is accurate it will certainly become clear over time. Gematsu postulate that because Integrade has a minimum six-month PS5 exclusivity, the game could release as early as December. If it is instead the original version, I'm not sure if the same exclusivity would apply, but at this point I can't imagine Squenix wanting to release any version other than the newest upgrade to any other platforms.

Source: Gematsu

So, yes, we buried the lede by posting the mobile games first. This is a free service, suck it up. Today's biggest Final Fantasy VII news is big but probably pretty predictable in some ways: Final Fantasy VII Remake is itself being remade. Okay, not really, but that line was too good to pass up. What we’re actually getting is a new release on Playstation 5 called "Intergrade," which will allow users to either bump their graphics up to 4K with HDR or to lock the frame rate at a constant 60fps. It will also add in a dedicated photo mode, which my daughter will eventually love since she seems to spend most of her FF7 time trying to get good screenshots of Wedge’s cats and Aerith on the way to Corneo’s mansion. Check out this introductory trailer to see the upgrades and the other big surprise.Intergrade will be available as a standalone game for PS5, but PS4 users who bought the PS4 version will get a free upgrade (with some minor stipulations). The other big news about the PS5 release will also come free for new purchasers, and will be available as purchased DLC for PS4 upgraders - an entirely new scenario with Yuffie. It’s entirely new because it will cover her time before Cloud meets her as she mounts a raid on Midgar with thievery on her mind. The timeline of the DLC will overlap with the events of FF7R, so it should be nicely spoiler-free. IGN’s post of the trailer video says that the DLC will be available also for PS4, though the video itself does not mention this. Gematsu is instead reporting that Squenix have explicitly said that the Yuffie DLC won't be released for PS4, so that is unfortunately likely the case.

Also in news today for Final Fantasy VII Remake, Famitsu reports this week that Tetsuya Nomura will not serve as co-director for part two, handing the reigns fully over to Naoki Hamaguchi. Nomura will stay on board as the creative director for the title for all upcoming Final Fantasy VII titles, with the handoff being possible due to the robust framework laid down for the main game via part one.

Source: Gematsu, IGN

Maybe not the news you expected to see tonight (that's still coming momentarily to your trusty CoN), but Square Enix also announced two Final Fantasy VII mobile titles today, "The First Soldier" and "Ever Crisis." We mentioned the trademarks for these games last month; now we know that the former is, surprisingly, a battle royale-style game set at the dawn of the SOLDIER era 30 years before Final Fantasy VII. It looks to be exactly as described, a third-person battle royale shooter with all the trappings of FF7 including firearms, swords, magic, summons, and big mechs. It will be out this year.Ever Crisis is a bit of a stranger thing to describe. It looks a little bit like Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition, though not as overtly chibi; the overworld art style looks like a high-res version of the original PSX game but combat looks like a scaled-down version of Remake. It will be an episodically-released game that will cover the entirety of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, even including Advent Children. It will start releasing in 2022.

Source: Gematsu

Just before Christmas, Square Enix applied for three new trademarks in Japan, all related to Final Fantasy VII; the filings were made public on Monday of this week.

Two were for text use: "Ever Crisis" and "The First Soldier." It seems reasonable to believe that these two are both related to the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, given the use of the terms "Crisis" and "Soldier" in other ways related to FF7. The third is more explicit - it's a trademark application for the logo used by Shinra Electric Power Company. The two text trademarks were filed on December 17, and the visual on December 22.

There's no other information about how these marks might be used, as only the Shinra logo has been used in the past in its current form. The other marks could refer to remakes, remasters, or new games in the FF7 universe for any platform. They could even refer to upcoming books based in the same. They could even be for projects that never actually happen. We will just have to see what happens with them in the future.

Source: Gematsu

Have you ever gone to Distant Worlds and thought, "okay, this is pretty awesome, but what if they did it just for Final Fantasy VII? And used the new arrangements from the Remake?" Well, okay, they kinda did that last year, sure. But that one-off is now a real thing, and we have the first dozen-plus dates for it for 2020 and 2021. This concert series is going to include the new Remake arrangements, as well as the new theme song that debuted last week. It will also have visuals from the new game, and will be directed by Arnie Roth; this, of course, might mean that Distant Worlds will be back-burnered for a while, but worse things have happened, surely.

No tickets are on sale until a couple weeks from now, but here are the known show dates:

• June 14: Los Angeles
• July 4: Singapore
• July 9 and 10: San Francisco
• August 22: Fort Worth, Texas
• September 11: Atlanta
• September 25: Phoenix, Arizona
• October 3: New York City
• October 24: Chicago
• October 30: London
• November 7 and 8: Bangkok
• December 13: Paris
• December 19: Barcelona
• January 8 and 9, 2021: Denver
• January 13, 2021: Nashville
• January 31, 2021: Boston
• February 12 and 13, 2021: Tokyo

Source: Final Fantasy VII Remake Concerts Official Site