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: Chain of Memories
"Chain of Memories" was announced along with "Kingdom Hearts II" at the Tokyo Game Show in September 2003. Initial details included the switch to 2D graphics, the use of cards to perform attacks, and that compressed movies would be utilized in some cut scenes. The cut scene animations were rendered using the graphical engine of the PlayStation 2 iteration and then encoded for the Game Boy Advance by using a technology developed by Japanese company, AM3. To help market the game, Disney and Square Enix launched official Japanese websites. A playable demo was first made available to the public at the 2003 Jump Festa in Japan; this demo and subsequent demos highlighted the card-based combat system. Aside from information gathered from the opening sequences, most details regarding the story were kept secret until the release.