It was a big weekend at PAX East as Final Fantasy 14 game director Naoki Yoshida (AKA Yoshi-P) and others from Square Enix showed up to share the latest on upcoming expansion Dawntrail. In fact, we got a release date, but we also got some color to go with that release date. Apparently, Yoshida and the developers wanted to release Dawntrail in June, but then a certain other bit of news dropped: The Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC release date. With that, Square Enix moved Dawntrail’s release date a week up to avoid direct competition.

Square Enix announced the release dates for the full release and early access during PAX East 2024 this last weekend. According to the announcement, Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail will give players who pre-order the game early access on June 28, 2024, on all available platforms. Then, the full release will come on July 2, 2024, making the game fully available worldwide.

While the release date is undoubtedly what most fans will be interested in, Yoshi-P had some color to add to the overall announcement. Apparently, Square Enix and the devs would have liked to have released Dawntrail a bit earlier, but some unforeseen circumstances got in the way: FromSoftware set the release date for Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for June 21.

“So we wanted to release FFXIV Dawntrail a bit earlier, but we realized that there's y'know, That DLC releasing around that time…” Yoshida told fans at PAX, who were a bit puzzled at first. Then he added: “Elden… Ring… DLC?”

The FF14 game director then went on to jokingly share that they came to a compromise on the matter:

Kind thoughts from Yoshi-P (who would also share that he wants to play Shadow of the Erdtree, too) as we look forward to immense summer of RPGs. With Dawntrail set for June 28 in early access and July 2 in full release, stay tuned for more Final Fantasy 14 news and updates here at Shacknews.