Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, the much-improved reincarnation of Square Enix’s online role-playing game, will be out on August 27 for PC and PS3, then later in the future for PS4. No Xbox 360. No Xbox One.
Allow Naoki Yoshida to explain why. Speaking with RPGSite, the new director of FFXIV pointed a finger at Xbox Live’s cross-platform policies — games on Microsoft’s online platform generally can’t share servers with games on other platforms. In other words, if you played the online game on Xbox 360, you wouldn’t be able to play in the same world as people on PlayStation 3.
Yoshida isn’t OK with that.
“The policy has not changed on Microsoft’s side,” Yoshida told RPGSite. “The main reason from our side is that I don’t want the community to be divided; to be split into two or more. For example, one player might be on the PC version, another might be on the PS4 version, and I’m playing the Xbox version – but we’re not able to join the same game servers. That is just… I just don’t like the idea. I disagree with it.
“To be frankly honest with you, there are now so many mobile devices, smart phones, everything — why would you ever just stick to one platform from the hardware aspect? Just — make it open to everyone? That’s my opinion.”
Boom. Funny enough, Square’s last online game, Final Fantasy XI, was actually cross-console on PS2, PC, and 360. But for whatever reason they can’t make it happen this time around. At least not yet.
Comments
19 responses to “Final Fantasy XIV Isn’t Coming To Xbox Because Of A Silly Policy”
If MMO’s and seamless multiplayer worlds are going to be a thing on next gen consoles (as we’re seeing with Destiny, The Division, and The Crew), then Microsoft need to sort their shit out and change their policy on cross platform play.
Microsoft need to sort their shit out.
This is all this story really needs.
They’re starting to admittedly, however that was more a kneejerk reaction to E3 I think. However, I think it’s a fantasy for anyone to think MS and Sony these days will ever have cross platform play.
It’s hilariously true, how the hell could people think playing cross platform games even remotely be fair, imagine playing CoD on Xbox and getting dominated by people on PC who have better hardware and peripheral support, remember shadowrun… PC always dominated and then even UT3 on Ps3 they had dedicated keyboard servers to balance the Keyboard and mouse users, never forget the likelihood of Sony and Microsot wanting to play ball with eachother … oh and Ps.. Who in any English speaking country actually cares about a final fantasy Mmo… LOL
“Microsoft needs to sort their shit out.”
quote of the year
I have to admit the current phase of beta’s for ARR are better than the finished product for the original FF14. so much smoother, streamlined, no quest limitation “so far”, and a nicer look and overall feel….
mind you the “loading” individual zones is a disapointment instead of the full open world/city zones, i know why they did it that way tho, it makes it smoother to play.
i dont see the issue with cross platform, its needed in this day and age, people need to stop with teh closed environments, keep you’re IP, keep you’re rules, but console enabled MMO’s and Topdown rpg’s like D3 would bring you more business, and ultimately wouldnt it save M$/sony money if they allowed a 3rd party to lease/manage the cross platform servers for them?
-Bah, posted as a reply. Disregard this.
I think FFXI was allowed to be cross platform on the 360 because it got on the console BEFORE Microsoft changed their policies… that or Microsoft were incredibly desperate for Japanese players to buy their console and had to do what SE demanded.
I’ve always wanted to see cross platform gaming become standard. Obviously there might be issues with FPS due to the inherent advantages PC gamers have over your standard console gamer who isn’t running a mouse and keyboard setup. Most genres however could lend themselves pretty well to fair cross platforming (obviously not RTS of ARPGs).
Just sounds like a excuse to me Defiance did it and it was nowhere near the budget of FFXIV
Are you sure about that? I was under the impression Defiance didn’t have cross server play. Multiplatform, sure, but not cross server/environment.
It doesn’t that’s what I mean they did it without cross platform play
It’s also not a roaring success, and the experience is poorer for being segmented.
I read Yoshi’s statement not as they can’t release multi-platform, but that they’re not going to because they disagree with the principles of the policy.
Neither was FFXIV it was that bad they had to remake it
Not seeing the point. The original (horrific) iteration didn’t even make it to the consoles, it was (rightly) panned so hard.
The re-make is the good version, and is a completely different animal. See, what they’re trying to do this time is do things RIGHT.
It was bad until Yoshi-P came along (which I think is the same time they started to remake FFXIV, while also updating 1.0). People were finally having fun in 1.XX, if I recall.
Took them long enough…
That said, the dramatic changes from 1.xx to ARR are all still for the better.
Oh most definitely (crafting in this game is actually fun, unlike FFXI… never again). A shame some people are going to cancel their pre-orders because of the temporary Lightning event…
@nestama Those people need to get a sense of perspective. People cancel pre-orders and subscriptions over any change whatosever. If it doesn’t hit RealID levels of cancellation… they’ll be back.
Meantime, yeah. It’s out-and-out fun. I’ve pretty publicly been a very… strident critic of FFXIV. I don’t really care to go looking back through my post history for it, but I’m pretty sure if you needed some pure, distilled vitriol, any of my words on 14’s launch would have a decent reservoir of the stuff.
But beta 2 and 3? I knew there are going to be character wipes, and I was still in there playing away. The thing is just fun to do. Progress is a big ticket for MMOs, but people WILL do something that is mechanically enjoyable even without progress. Just look at Counter-Strike or TF2.
S’gonna be a good launch, IMO. They might need to offer some free trial carrots or something to counter the (justifiably) skeptical, but word of mouth might do the trick.
I don’t understand the reason for it, I hope they do a 180 on this policy!
Says the guy that runs Halo and cod LANs….
Come join the master race 🙂