Final Fantasy XV won't be on Vita/3DS
Users demand "cutting edge graphics".
Square Enix has no plans to follow Dragon Quest IX's lead and move the main Final Fantasy series onto handhelds.
Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase told Eurogamer that fans demand top-of-the-line visuals from the core series, leaving them no choice but to restrict the franchise to high definition machines.
"If you're talking about the main Final Fantasy titles, one of the strong focuses of the series is cutting edge graphics. That's what people enjoy and that's what people associate Final Fantasy with," he insisted.
"In that sense I would like to assure our users of this top quality artistic visual achievement. To do that we have to stick with high definition consoles."
Kitase added that Square will continue to concentrate handheld development on franchise spin-offs, such as the Tactics or Crisis Core series.
"Though the main Final Fantasy franchise has always been with top definition consoles, Crisis Core, for example, has been very successful on PSP. So those smaller projects we'll consider for PSP2 or 3DS."
The last entry in the franchise's primary timeline, the much-derided Final Fantasy XIV Online, launched last year, while Final Fantasy XIII-2 arrives for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 next year.
The main Dragon Quest series found huge success when it moved from PlayStation 2 to DS last year, with the acclaimed Sentinels of the Starry Skies shifting over six million copies worldwide since launch.