Kingdom Hearts III
"Kingdom Hearts III" was released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 25, 2019 in Japan and other Asian countries, and is scheduled to be released on January 29, 2019 elsewhere. In July 2017, at D23, it was announced that the game would release in 2018. Almost a year later, at an additional performance of the "Kingdom Hearts" Orchestra World Tour in Los Angeles, the game's North American release date was revealed to be January 29, 2019. Nomura spoke to moving the game's release date outside of 2018, stating the development team had been told the original release date they had considered was not "good timing in the year" to release the game, especially considering "differences in holiday lengths and how stores behave in different regions". In addition, Square Enix requested the game be released as simultaneously as possibly between Japan and the rest of the world, and not wanting to move up the release at the expense of development, resulted in the January 2019 date being chosen. The game's epilogue is planned to be added to the game on January 26 for Japan and January 30 elsewhere, while the secret film content is planned to be added worldwide on January 31, 2019. This was done in order to help prevent them from leaking beforehand, since Nomura called them "the biggest spoilers" in the game.
Kingdom Hearts III
At E3 2018, worlds based on "Frozen" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" were revealed. Nomura also provided an update to the development of the "Big Hero 6" world, revealing all the gameplay had been created, with the cutscenes still needing to be completed. Shortly after, Square Enix released on their website short story recap videos for the series in Japanese. These videos were the same that were included in the game's "Memory Archive" feature. At X018, a world based on "Winnie the Pooh" was revealed. Shortly after, it was reported that the character of Winnie the Pooh would be censored in China. This was due to the Chinese government banning any depictions of the character after the character's appearance had been compared to that of Chinese president Xi Jinping. To improve the Gummi Ship gameplay, a criticism in previous entries, the development team who created the scrolling shooter 1997 game "Einhänder" was brought in to handle this portion of the game, along with other programmers and engineers who have worked on driving games. Development of the game was completed by November 20, 2018.