Despite all of FFXIV’s well chronicled problems, it could still potentially see a launch on the Xbox 360, as well as handheld devices, director Naoki Yoshida revealed in an interview with RPG Site.
“Of course, because the game is developed on the PC, moving it to the Xbox 360 platform wouldn’t be that difficult, but as we said before, the thing we have to get done first is getting that PS3 version done. Once that’s done, we can take the next step from there. We are continuing our talks with Microsoft, but then you think, maybe next year Microsoft might be announcing their next hardware, and so our decision is do we wait for that next hardware? So we’re going to wait and see what’s happening after we delivered what we’ve promised.”
When asked if the team had considered the possibilities of the Playstation Vita, Yoshida had an obvious amount of enthusiasm about the possibilities of the platform and mobile platforms in general.
Yes, currently this is all post-2.0, but because we’re doing a reconstruction of our server system, in those plans, we’re going to make sure that the servers can be accessed by outside devices such as smart phones. Not just the Vita, but also smart phones, so that kind of access will be allowed. What that will open the door to is things like applications that people can used to check their inventory, or check the market and purchase things from the auctions. Those are the things we are laying for in our server foundation, so we can be ready to implement those after 2.0.
For example, beyond that, maybe an application that lets you raise your chocobo, and then transfer it back into the game.
Yoshida has notably been a huge advocate for transparency with the player base, saying “We made these promises in our announcements, and then we follow-up by keeping those promises to slowly rebuild that trust. The biggest part of that is continuing communication. I love to communicate with the players, and I know they love communicating with me, and we want to continue that.”
However, while Yoshida is keen to look at the future of the MMO in regards to other platforms, his number one priority is getting FFXIV on PS3 like originally planned.
“Like I mentioned before, the one thing to regain that damaged player trust is to keep those promises, and one of the promises was to release a PlayStation 3 version – we made that promise long, long ago, and we still haven’t kept it. We made that promise not only to the players, but to Sony as well. The first thing that we need to do, to regain that trust, is to fulfill those promises of bringing the PS3 version. Our priority right now is getting that version finished.”
As a long-time player of FFXI, I followed the launch of FFXIV very closely and was dismayed to see it launch in the poor state that it did. Hopefully Yoshida can realise his ambitions and get the game set squarely on the right track.
Source: RPG Site
