Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] lands on PS5 and Switch 2 on 8 October

Square Enix will release Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on Thursday 8 October, packaging three compilations of the Disney and Square Enix crossover series into a single bundle.

What is in the collection

The bundle carries three parts. Kingdom Hearts -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX- holds the first six entries in the series, from Kingdom Hearts Final Mix through Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix to the 358/2 Days and Re:coded HD cutscene compilations. Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue adds Dream Drop Distance HD, the χ Back Cover movie and the short episode 0.2 Birth by Sleep – A fragmentary passage –. Kingdom Hearts III completes the set with its Re Mind downloadable content.

The same material has been on PC for two years. On Steam, Square Enix sells the three parts separately and offers them together as a bundle called Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece, which contains exactly the three compilations going to consoles, and Square Enix's own product page notes that the PC edition is already on sale. The 8 October release is the collection's debut on the current Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

The upgrade discount

Owners of the digital versions of the earlier compilations are being offered a 50 per cent discount on the new bundle. Square Enix's terms cover anyone who bought Kingdom Hearts -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX- or Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue individually on Nintendo Switch as a cloud version, on PlayStation 4 or on Xbox One, and the reduction applies to pre-orders as well as purchases made after launch. Physical editions are being produced for Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5.

From cloud versions to native hardware

The offer is also the clearest statement yet of how the series has been sold on Nintendo hardware. The discount terms refer back to the Switch cloud versions, streaming releases that were the only way to play these games on the original Switch. The 8 October edition is a native release for Switch 2, on the same day as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions.

Our opinion

Square Enix has been running an unusually blunt exercise in patience management, and this bundle is the clearest sign yet of how it intends to keep the series warm while the next mainline entry is built. The interesting decision is not the port count but the discount: a 50 per cent cut for people who already own HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX- or 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue is an admission that this audience has been asked to buy the same six stories more than once, and that the company would rather take the hit than sell a full-price bundle to the only customers who know the material by heart. It also quietly settles the Switch problem. The cloud versions were always the weak point of the series on Nintendo hardware, because a game built on quick, twitchy combat is a poor fit for streaming, and putting the collection on Switch 2 natively matters far more than any of the extras bundled here. The remaining question is timing rather than value: with the collection landing on three consoles at once and the PC edition already on Steam, this is not so much a new release as a consolidation, and Square Enix will need the next proper Kingdom Hearts game to do the work that a fourth reissue of the same six titles cannot.