It’s been over ten years since the launch of Final Fantasy XIV on PC and PlayStation and Phil Spencer says that Microsoft still hasn’t given up on bringing it to Xbox. The popular online game has over 25 million players and was also released for the PlayStation 5 in 2021. He recently attended the Tokyo Game Show and during an interview with Game Watch was asked about the current status of bringing the game to Xbox since he’d previously stated in 2019 that it was being worked on. Phil Spencer says that Microsoft and Square Enix are still committed to working with each other on the game.
Hahaha, I did say that (laughs). Of course, we haven’t given up yet. This is Microsoft and Square Enix’s commitment to the game fans of both companies, and we will continue to coordinate in the future.
It appears that Microsoft’s cross-play regulations are what is still holding up the game from making its way to the Xbox consoles. Evidently, in particular, there are two rules that are preventing it. Square Enix video game producer, director, and designer, Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P), went into detail about the two rules that are preventing the Xbox release. The following is from a group interview with members of WccfTech, Massively OP, and IGN Latin America in 2019.
Two months ago, I discussed with Phil Spencer. I have explained this before but we are prepared to do crossplay at any time. To play an MMORPG, there are 2 regulations for Microsoft which stand in the way of making crossplay feasible. Unless these regulations are rejected, there is no meaning. Simply speaking, the matching base FPS style game has no issues with those 2 regulations. If we had made an FPS game [had FF14 been one of those games], then we would already have crossplay. One of the regulations is that players with different platforms cannot chat with each other in-game. Then how do you play an MMO? The other regulation is you cannot make a community with plays on a different platform. You can’t form a guild, you can’t enter into a link shell, [and] no free company. So I would like to have Microsoft change their regulations. And this is not limited to Microsoft but there are many players who only have crossplay experience with FPS games, especially with the business scene. For an MMORPG, a game which full communication is possible, regulations need to be created considering how massive an MMORPG is to have true crossplay. Final Fantasy XIV will not release crossplay without making this clear because that would only hurt the players. I think we can only try to continue having our discussions with those parties [to communicate and relay what is needed].
So to summarize, Microsoft would need to allow players to chat in-game and join communities with users on other platforms.
Source: VGC
Discussion (4 replies)
Join Discussion →It’s somewhat odd because FFXI was on the 360 (but not the PS3) - iirc there was a dispute over XBGL being a requirement: it was as not for 11, but rumor was MS was going to require it for 14 and S/E was adamant that it not.
Maybe it's just me, but every time I see the name of this franchise regardless of the Roman numeral involved, but especially any that include an "X", I can't help but think to myself that maybe the word "final" doesn't mean what they think it means. That said, I am completely unfamiliar with the FF body of work except that many years ago we rented a cartoon video (VHS at the time) that was completely forgettable, so I have no clue if the word "final" in the title has a different context than the usual.
Well afaik most of the games stand on their own, only X had a sequel in X-2, but it's a bit like AC/DC it all looks a bit alike and the quality depends mostly on the inspiration of the moment story wise anyways, I haven't realy played a lot of them, and none b4 VII and not much is still engraged in my memory other then XV gameplay was crap and the story mediocre at best.
13 had two sequels, and 7 had a prequel, sequel and lot of spinoffs
But yeah, outside of some franchise commonalities (Chocobos, Cid, Gaia, etc) - each numerical entry is almost it's own universe / world / lore / etc. But even that has some exception - 12 and Tactics share the same world and lore. 14 pulls a lot of characters, locations and lore from other games, but isn't in any of their universes - it's it's own distinct thing.