Final Fantasy VII could be an exclusive game of the Sega Saturn: this is shown by a SEGA document

The document details his numerous attempts to acquire the exclusivity of the Squaresoft title.

The VGDensetsu site has published a summary of an article written by Yosuke Okunari , the creative director of SEGA . It mentions the company’s intention to launch Final Fantasy VII on its platform, Sega Saturn .

SEGA planned to expand the Sega Saturn to a general audience.Sega Saturn had a wide variety of games, however its library lacked RPG titles. SEGA planned to change that with the exclusivity of Final Fantasy VII, the first title in the franchise to leave Nintendo platforms. In 1996, SEGA’s intention was to expand the Sega Saturn to a general audience , an achievement that they claimed they would achieve with FFVII.

Okunari believed that Final Fantasy VII had “the ability” to unite different types of communities, something that Sega Saturn lacked. However, and as we know the story, Square decided to launch its title on the PlayStation console . In response to this, SEGA would release the Panzer Dragoon Saga to compete with FFVII, but it would take them 2 years to get the game out, and by that time, PlayStation had already gained a tremendous advantage in the console war.

1996 continued to be a good year for the Sega Saturn, but the console would remain in the shadow of the first PlayStation, being outsold in both Japan and North America. Factors such as a complicated development environment, in addition to the unexpected early release , seriously damaged the Sega Saturn, but Final Fantasy VII was, according to Okunari’s article, the decisive blow during that generation.