Square Enix Launches Its First Vive-exclusive Game, ‘Kai-ri-Sei Million Arthur VR’, in Japan

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Videogame publisher and developer Square Enix, famous for its Final Fantasy franchise, among others, has launched its first game for the HTC Vive, Kai-ri-Sei Million Arthur VR in Japan.

In collaboration with game developer GREE, Square Enix has published its first Vive title, an adaptation of the company’s JRPG card-based combat game Kai-ri-Sei Million Arthur which has grown to prominence in Japan with deployments across on Android, iOS, PS Vita, 3DS, and PlayStation 4 totalling more than 14 million downloads.

Kai-ri-Sei Million Arthur VR launched today on the Japanese Steam store for ~$36 USD. The game puts the player inside the Million Arthur world, allowing them to fight alongside their party with powerful spells in turn-based combat.

The game appears to be much more than a straight port, offer a fully 3D environment, characters, and enemies, and a made-for-VR interface. In the trailer heading this article, players can also be seen wielding weapons from the game world and swinging them to initiate attacks. Users will also be able to dress up their party members in various outfits (there’s several available as DLC at launch).

The game’s Steam page officially lists support for the HTC Vive and Seated and Standing play areas. Back during the game’s announcement in 2016, HTC, Square Enix, and GREE issued a joint press release stating that the game would be exclusive to the Vive.

“We are now extensively working with the global leading Game Soft creator and developer, Square Enix and its partner, Gree to launch the VR version of Kai-ri-Sei Million Arthur VR, one of the best-selling mobile card games worldwide, exclusively on HTC Vive,” HTC said in the release. “This strategic partnership will help foster the global virtual reality ecosystem, and deliver the most inspiring and vibrant experiences on the HTC Vive.”

It’s unclear if the game will offer some level of Oculus Rift support due to default integration with OpenVR, or if the developers have created intentional barriers against the game being played with the Rift.

Oculus faces occasional criticism over its practice of signing some platform-exclusive deals to get developers to launch their titles exclusively on Oculus Home. HTC has adopted a different approach, saying they don’t believe in or pursue such deals. The announcement of Kai-ri-Sei Million Arthur VR’s exclusivity seems counter to that notion, though the company has largely made good on its word to steer clear of exclusives, and has even maintained Rift support alongside the Vive for its own internally developed title, Arcade Saga.

SEE ALSO
Oculus on Platform-exclusive VR Content: 'it's the only viable way to jumpstart the market'

Although this is the first launch of a full Vive game for Square Enix, it isn’t the first time the company has dabbled in the medium. A Final Fantasy XV VR experience was announced back in mid 2016 and is ostensibly still in the works, due to launch as an add-on to the game for PSVR. The company also ported Hitman Go (2014) for the Oculus Rift and Gear VR, and launched the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided VR Experience demo.

Somewhat outside of the game space, the company’s Advanced Technology Division developed a tech demo called Project Hikari which explores how popular manga might be adapted to the VR medium.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Martin L

    The game runs fine on the Rift without using any hacks, it isn’t a Vive exclusive.

    • 1droidfan

      How do you get around the region lockout?

      • Martin L

        You have to use a VPN to buy the game.

    • benz145

      Did you test this yourself? Some games actively prevent SteamVR’s default Rift functionality. Google Earth VR for instance required an outside hack to get it to work with the Rift via SteamVR.

    • Get Schwifty!

      Hey mate – did you run this with the Touch controllers as well, or do they just appear like the wands with some mapping involved?

  • Jim Cherry

    I blaim square on the exclusivity confusion they arent the best pc developer so they may think rift doesnt work with steam games ;}

  • Brad Blackmere

    Yes, very disgraceful that Oculus users are able to buy and play this right now and it works just fine.

    Those pathetic Vive Fanboys should be ashamed of themselves for supporting a more open ecosystem.

    BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!

  • Raphael

    I’m a Vive user and i see no point in locking this game down to one vr system. It’s not gonna make potential oculus buyers switch to vive. All it does is limit sales of the game to one system which is fucking dumb when vr is still a niche peripheral. If i developed games I’d want to sell to as many users as possible. Unless of course the oculus bribe was so massive that it dwarfed what i could expect in sales.

    • Get Schwifty!

      The whole things sounds like someone with the mentality of ThatTomGuy at Square Enix made an arbitrary decision on declaring it an “exclusive” which probably only means it doesn’t have native Touch support, just like the loads of other games on Steam that don’t “officially” support Rift but work just fine, albeit with some tweaking.

      Again, while I don’t like the idea of exclusives, I understand Oculus’ move with their store to not be dependent upon Valve/Vive’s relationship and it’s impact on Steam to determine their success… and it isn’t the first game we have heard of that was “exclusive to Vive” and it works just fine.

  • ThatTomGuy

    cant wait to play it ^_^ as a gamer i feel bad for oculus users but…as u guys support exclusives I just wanna say, it sucks to be you. bwhahaha

    • Get Schwifty!

      Wow…. do your parents know you are using their computer?

      FWIW, buying a Rift doesn’t mean one automatically endorses exclusives (reality is most don’t give it a second thought on purchase). Not sure how it sucks, Rift owners have direct access to everything… but OTOH, this move is pure hypocrisy in the Vive world.

      • ThatTomGuy

        “FWIW, buying a Rift doesn’t mean one automatically endorses exclusives” how do you figure that? you bought an incomplete Vr setup that had one thing going for it, Exclusives.. the second you purchased it..you supported it.

        • Get Schwifty!

          Buying from a platform doesn’t mean you politically support all of said vendors’ tactics or values. This narrow opinion of yours is like saying you inherently support a political parity’s full platform because you agree with some of what they do, when this is rarely true

          Oculus was not an incomplete solution either, unless you wanted room scale and were ignorant enough to buy a product that at the time that didn’t officially support it. Otherwise it did exactly as it stated. You need facts not emotional associations…

          • ThatTomGuy

            even as a seated device it was incomplete..hence the reason u got an Xbox controller. there was no reason to buy the Oculus other than price point and exclusives and as the price point is Null if you bought the touch unit..6 months? after the headset launched bringing the prices to just about equal. they both perform nearly the same.

            “Buying from a platform doesn’t mean you politically support all of said vendors’ tactics or values.” it absolutely does you just don’t want to take responsibility for it. you gave them money for a product based on them having exclusive titles. but don’t worry your not the only one to support these kind of tactics. knowingly or not u support it.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ad883b3ab56315595c6765adaad7ab5378869aeda9e4a7ab55b9da5c3f63ddcb.jpg

        • Mane Vr

          I bought it in support of exclusives I love the fact that without using hacks I can play over 90% of vr games as I choice to. so yea exclusives so a big part of it that and the fact I hated the vive controller as well as the whole stand to play vr games that seem to be the crazy in vr on the vive. but that is just me we all have our reason for the hmd we pick if you guys would stop focusing on this hmd war we can focus on what really matter and that is letting devs know what we like and don’t like about the shit they been selling us as games.. FE this game looks like they went back to turn-base combat with card collection. really? this is like 90’s gameplay and we are suppose to be excited about this cause it from square/enix god I wish this game was exclusive to the vive

          • ShadowGirl

            The vive supports seated experiences too, it just ALSO supports room-scale which is great for certain things.

  • 256 Selfie

    Mostly because it was just a picture-story show just for seeing in the theater, I refunded it.Boring story invites drowsiness.The contents are not suitable for the price, it is disappointing.

  • Myrontrue

    I saw this coming. For all the high and mighty talk about no exclusives this happens. And let me guess, Valve get a pass because theyre valve.

    Stop this worship of Steam…theyre the same as EA and Ubisoft…the guy who said Valve get a free pass to do bullshit like this because of this perception that they are “here for pc gamers” is true.

    We should be lementing them as much as we did Oculus

    • Lemming

      ehm, did you read the article or comments at all? Where did you get the bit where Valve told Square Enix that this should be exclusive? Do not confuse the parties involved with their partners when it comes to the different stages of vr (development of technology, hardware, manufacturing or game development and publishing).

      I agree with several other commenters here that it is just plain stupid of Square Enix or HTC to call it “exclusively […]” with a loaded term like that. If it basically works with Oculus then the OpenVR platform works as designed and thats more than great for everyone involved. I can understand if Square Enix or GREE choose to only support the Vive though.