Final Fantasy XIV is, once again, on the lips and minds of RPG lovers around the world as the latest expansion Stormblood takes us all (forgive me for this) by storm. A rocky week of early access play proved once again that whenever anything new comes to Final Fantasy XIV, fans turn out in overwhelming droves capable of overwhelming servers. This game isn’t going anywhere soon. In fact, Square Enix is still keen to expand to additional consoles.
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Kotaku caught up with FF XIV producer Naoki Yoshida to discuss Stormblood and the future of Final Fantasy XIV, and the conversation went a few interesting directions. It was revealed that Final Fantasy XIV had to move on from the PS3 due to the hardware’s age, and it wasn’t necessarily the GPU holding things back — it was the slow memory. Believe it or not, the Nintendo Switch presents a more viable platform for Final Fantasy XIV, and this is something Yoshida has been thinking about for a long time.
Here’s what he had to say:
“I’ve said this on several occasions, but it hasn’t changed. We would love for as many players to be on FFXIV as possible.
“Conversations have been had with Mr. Phil Spencer of Microsoft, and the upper management teams of Nintendo. But I have proposed a condition every time I speak with any platform manufacturers. It’s that the game has to have the capability of cross-platform play.
“Of course with an MMORPG, once it launches and starts going into live services and operations, there will be a community. No matter how small it dwindles down to, we have to be responsible for taking care of those communities. It would become an obstacle if the first-party or manufacturer changed how patches are being implemented or online regulations.
“Some of our external parties’ regulations don’t have MMORPGs in mind in terms of how they’re regulating their online activities. Those can become a hurdle when we consider operating FFXIVfor an extended period of time, and so when I talk to those first-party companies, I ask them, ‘Do you have the capability to prepare for that, do you have the resolve that you’re going to make sure to take responsibility and take care of those, do you have that willingness?’
“If we are able to come to some sort of agreement, a handshake so to speak, or if it does end up being that unfortunately we can’t do a handshake with Final Fantasy XIV, either way we’ll make sure to communicate with our players. But we have been tenacious—we’ve been trying to keep at it and be persistent about our conversations.”
It all comes down to parity; to keeping the communities on all platforms together at all times. This goes beyond simple cross-platform gameplay. It means that patches must be able to get deployed immediately across all platforms, and that is likely where the issues are arising. Final Fantasy XIV is not the second most popular subscription-based MMO in the world, so hopefully Nintendo and Microsoft both see the value in doing whatever it takes to get the game on their consoles — for our sake.
