Pre-order listings at two of Australia’s biggest game retailers briefly gave Kingdom Hearts IV a release year. Product descriptions for Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] at JB Hi-Fi and EB Games both told customers to play the series “before the release of KINGDOM HEARTS IV in 2027,” ComicBook reported June 10.
The wording was identical on both retailers’ pages. Product descriptions for boxed games are typically supplied to stores by the publisher or a local distributor, not written per listing. EB Games’ product page for the collection remains live without the line.
After screenshots of the descriptions circulated, both retailers removed the 2027 reference, per ComicBook. Square Enix has not commented on the listings and has announced no release window for the game, leaving the year unconfirmed.
Kingdom Hearts IV was revealed in 2022 as the opening of the series’ “Lost Master” arc, with Sora stranded in Quadratum, a Tokyo-inspired city, as TwistedVoxel noted in its coverage of the listings. A new trailer ran during the June 9 Nintendo Direct, and the game is confirmed to launch simultaneously on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Retail listings have a mixed record
Retailer copy has outed real games before. In May 2018, Walmart Canada published product pages for Rage 2, Gears of War 5, and Just Cause 4 weeks before their announcements, as Variety reported at the time, and the titles proved real. Dates are a separate issue. Retail systems often require a date field and fill it with a placeholder, and retailers have walked back their own listings before: when Walmart Canada listed a release date for Death Stranding later that year, the company first said the listing was correct, then said the following day that the date was “a placeholder.”
A line written into shared product copy can also simply be an error. Until Square Enix comments, the 2027 reference is consistent with an early disclosure, a placeholder, or a mistake.
The collection behind the listings
The descriptions appeared on pages for Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III], the native-version bundle of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind that Square Enix announced June 9 for Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, arriving October 8. A 2027 release would land in the franchise’s 25th-anniversary year; the original Kingdom Hearts launched in Japan in March 2002.
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