Final Fantasy XIV May Not Be Exclusive
Yesterday’s big shocker at Sony’s E3 Conference was the announcement of Final Fantasy XIV Online for the PS3 which is due for release next year. Sony seemed to have missed out some details. Despite stating it’s exclusivity to the Sony console a 360 version is not out of the question.
A Square-Enix conference is currently taking place in which Marcus Beer (Annoyed Gamer/Grumpy McGrump) is twittering the conference stating that:
So Sony kinda missled us yesterday with the whole FFXIV ‘exclusive’ thing. The game is coming to PS3 and PC, and Square are going to great lengths to say that they are looking at all other options including 360.
Naughty Sony!
I personally think that MS would be rightly pissed if they are screwed out of FFXIV Online after spending a lot of time and effort pushing FFXIII.
Thus possibly making this title a timed exclusive for the PS3. Considering it’s also being made for PC, porting to the 360 makes sense.
There are more details:
FFXIV will ship globally at the same time
Server setup will be identical to FFXI.
Square hope that FFXIV will run alongside FFXI with the communities playing both.
They wanted to make the best Final Fantasy game possible, and felt that the MMO format would make that possible.
Best format possible? Someone in Square liked FFXI and XII.
Update
FFXI characters can not be transferred to FFXIV but character design is similar and friends lists can be carried across.
Here’s some more info:
“The development for FFXIV started 4 or 5 years ago with primary ideas. Development started a few years ago, while FFXI was still being supported. FFXI will continue to be supported. There is another year of content planned. There are no plans for the near future to stop development on FFXI. ”
“As with WoW, we want to aim a bit for the casual user. However, we don’t want to make a copy of WoW. We believe we will have things that are unique and will stand out from that game. ”
“All of the knowledge and experience we gained from FFXI will be used in the development of FFXIV. At the launch, we intend to have content for solo players as well as large-scale battles. We want a wide-variety from the start.”
“The current plans are to have worldwide servers that are cross-platform and cross-region. We will do a beta test and look at the balance and player experience. We want to look for a good balance between region and cross-region play. ”
“We envision users that will hopefully play XI one day and XIV another. They will be independent, but users are free to play both. ”
“We are trying to implement a lot of new systems that other MMO’s haven’t used in the past.”
For more additional information adding on to the above poster, Square-Enix's press conference was primarily about FFXIV.
http://e3.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/696020/Live-...
Biggest criticism for FFXI was the fact that it didn't cater enough to the casual crowd, as the game required large investments of time from players in order to level up (by post 60, you would need to dedicate many hours to gain only a few levels). The other big problem was there was very little you could do on your own by the later levels. Leveling solo was only possible by less than a handful of job classes (with appropriate subjob combinations) but even then, these strategies were make-shift and no where near optimized by SE.
"A: Another very important concept that takes a different direction from FFXI, for FFXIV we want to make it so the player can choose to play solo, in a party, 40 minutes, all-day… there will be content for ALL of those play styles and systems for all of those play styles."
The ability to be able to choose between playing in parties or playing solo and still be equally productive is certainly a correction SE is making from XIV's predecessor.