When Final Fantasy 14, there was a fair bit of confusion at first- why was there no Xbox version? It made no sense, after all especially since Final Fantasy 11, the original Square Enix Final Fantasy MMO, had come to Xbox 360. Over time, it emerged that the game wasn’t coming to Xbox because of Microsoft’s policy at the time to disallow any form of cross network play between Xbox Live and other online networks.
We have come a long way since then, and earlier this year, Microsoft officially opened up Xbox Live, finally allowing for the prospect of true cross platform play. With this restriction no longer in place, would Square Enix now consider an Xbox One port?
As it turns out, they are already talking to Microsoft about the prospect of that happening.
“Microsoft actually approached the Final Fantasy 14 team about the cross-platform opportunity,”Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida told Polygon. “When our team reviewed the regulations that are associated with that, we realized that Microsoft may not have the experience or understanding of running an MMORPG as an online game genre just yet. The Final Fantasy 14 team has fed back to Microsoft that there are certain elements of its regulations that we would have to consider waived. We’re waiting on Microsoft’s response for that, but we are having discussions.”
Yoshida also discussed the team’s continuing support of the PS3 version of the game against all odds, discussing how long they may be continuing with that- particularly given that the PS3 is now entering its eleventh year on the market.
“At this point, we’ve already declared that we’ll continue to fully support the PS3 through the 3.x series of patches,” Yoshida said. “That’s about all we can say at this point. If anything changes with that, we’ll be sure to update our players so that they are aware.”
So- for now, Final Fantasy 14 will continue to be supported on the PS3. It may also come to the Xbox One some time soon. All in all, this sounds like a good bit of information about the game to me.