The pre-E3 2012 rumor was specific: Kingdom Hearts HD Remix, the long-anticipated high-definition collection of Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, would be revealed during E3 week 2012 for PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PlayStation Vita. The post drew 37 backlinks across the European and Japanese gaming press chain.
What actually happened at E3 2012, and afterwards, makes for a useful study in how publisher reveal cycles interact with leak coverage.
What Square Enix actually announced
At E3 2012, Square Enix did not announce Kingdom Hearts HD Remix. The collection was instead revealed in September 2012 at the Tokyo Game Show under the title Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX, and its launch was confirmed as PS3-exclusive. The Wii U version the rumor predicted never materialized. The Vita version never materialized.
Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX launched March 2013 in Japan and September 2013 in North America and Europe, on PS3 only. Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX followed in 2014 with Kingdom Hearts II, Birth by Sleep, and the cinematic-only Re:coded. HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX got a PS4 reissue in 2017. Eventually the entire series consolidated as Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far on PS4 in 2018, and again on Xbox One, then PC via Epic Games Store in 2021, and Switch via cloud streaming in 2022.
So the rumor was right that Kingdom Hearts HD Remix existed and was coming. It was wrong about the timing (TGS, not E3), wrong about the platforms (PS3-only, not multi-platform with Wii U and Vita), and wrong about the launch window (2013 in Japan, not the E3-window release the rumor implied).
Why the platform claim was wrong
The Wii U + Vita component of the rumor reflected a 2012 expectation that Square Enix would treat the new Nintendo and Sony portable/hybrid platforms as natural homes for a back-catalog HD collection. Both platforms were either launched (Vita, February 2012) or imminent (Wii U, November 2012), both had active marketing pushes, and Square Enix had publicly courted both ecosystems.
The reason it didn’t happen comes down to two factors. First, Tetsuya Nomura’s design team handled the HD remasters internally with engine work optimized for PS3’s Cell architecture; porting to ARM-based Vita or Wii U’s PowerPC variant would have required substantial re-engineering. Second, by mid-2013 Square Enix was already pivoting strategically to PS4, which would absorb the entire Kingdom Hearts remaster line via the 2017 reissue.
The third platform never came
The Wii U Kingdom Hearts HD Remix the rumor predicted has never shipped, on any platform, in any form. The closest equivalent is the cloud-streaming version on Switch (2022), which is technically a different product running through Square Enix’s streaming infrastructure rather than a native port. Switch 2 native ports of the Kingdom Hearts collections have not been announced as of early 2026.
The TGS reveal context
Square Enix’s choice of TGS over E3 for the announcement made commercial sense in retrospect. Kingdom Hearts‘s strongest sales geography is Japan, and TGS lets Japanese publishers control the narrative around their fall and holiday releases. E3 in 2012 was already heavily booked with Square Enix’s Western priorities (Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution, Lightning Returns setup work). The HD Remix announcement was better served by a dedicated Japanese spotlight three months later.
The 2012 rumor’s platform expectations were defensible at the time but underestimated how aggressively Square Enix would consolidate Kingdom Hearts exclusivity to Sony platforms across the entire generation, and how late other-platform availability would arrive.
Score
By the standard scoring framework — rumor predicted X, X happened or didn’t — this one is roughly half-right. The collection existed and shipped. The reveal venue, the launch window, and two of the three named platforms were wrong. The PS3 platform claim was right. The franchise’s eventual cross-platform expansion in 2017–2022 retrofitted the rumor’s broader inclusiveness, but in a different generation and with different products than originally implied.
About this URL
The original 2012 post was hosted on the site’s Ning-based community blog. Modern WordPress rewrites the legacy URL onto this flat slug. This retrospective replaces the original speculative report with a scoring against actual Square Enix releases through 2026. For Square Enix release coverage, see the News section.