FFXIV Director: We Want More Square Enix Games on Xbox - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 December 2024 / 2,632 Views
Final Fantasy XIV Director and Final Fantasy XVI Producer Naoki Yoshida in an interview with Eurogamer stated "we do want to release more Square Enix games on Xbox."
"Players have been waiting a long time for the Xbox release [of Final Fantasy XIV], but I'm happy to say that we've seen a really strong response on Xbox, we've seen communities starting to establish and now they're growing," said Yoshida. "We've had a pretty good response on Xbox.
"With Final Fantasy XIV as an opportunity, we can take this opportunity to strengthen the community on Xbox towards the Final Fantasy franchise. I think this is where we would take more communication and work on establishing the community moving forward. And this is important, not for Final Fantasy XIV, but, I would say, for Square Enix.
"With Final Fantasy XIV's release on Xbox, Phil Spencer spent a lot of his time and a lot of effort and put in a lot of hard work into making it a reality. So we would like to make the best of that and further deepen the relationship with Xbox gamers moving forward.
"I want you to just take this as a general argument, but when it comes to the Xbox platform and the fact that it was difficult for Japanese titles to be released on the platform, that's tied into the fact that in the Japanese market there is an extremely low number of users on Xbox. And naturally, because we are Japanese developers, we have a desire for many people in our country to play our games.
"I think that applies to developers in any country, whichever country they come from, they want many people from their own country to play their games. Because of that, it's really a tough point in terms of a business standpoint. I think that's generally one perspective of how you can look at things in terms of the situation.
"However, at Square Enix, we have been changing our policy. So now we are moving towards the policy of releasing our games on a multiplatform basis, and we really want as many players as possible to play our titles. So, with Final Fantasy XIV as the starting point, we do want to release more Square Enix games on Xbox, and there will be more of our titles released on Xbox. So I hope players will look forward to future things to come on the platform."
Xbox has struggled to sell in Japan since the early days of the platform. The original Xbox sold just under 500,000 units in the country, while the Xbox 360, the best-selling Xbox in Japan, sold 1.66 million units. The Xbox One sold just 116,000 units, and the Xbox Series X|S has managed to sell 621,000 units to date.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Hopefully more Final Fantasy on the Switch 2 as well.
I think so. I mean, publishers are starting to see how the exclusivity model is not viable in the long run esp. if they want to grow.
Square Enix problems are not only because of that but it is big part of it; they need to stop signing those deals for their big AAA with Sony and publish those games on other platforms. Xbox (30M+), PC (way more...), Nintendo consoles... There is no way Sony can offset that at the end. And while I believe Final Fantasy 16 did not do well because of the game itself being not so good (if you put aside the cutscenes); they have other instances (like Final Fantasy 7 Part 2 and others where the exclusivity deals probably hurt very much; and I don't think anyone can argue that FF7 Part 2 is a really good game).
SE probably saw how the XB One tanked compared to the 360, and figured Nintendo Switch wouldn't sell even half of what it did, maybe not even a third, after what the Wii U did, and figured they could make more money being exclusive with Sony, whom they probably figured would alone have 50-60% market share this generation (back when they signed these exclusivity deals).
They now see how wrong they were. Switch is dominating everything, and while Xbox sales aren't great, Gamepass is extremely solid, and if MS wanted they could sell a lot more hardware next generation by making all the acquired studio games exclusive. It's like nukes, just having them makes you more of a threat, you don't have to use them. MS has a lot of nukes now.
So for SE it now males a lot more sense to release on all console and PC platforms (especially with things like the Steam Deck and Rog Ally variations taking off).
It's ironic that the only way to play the FF XIII games on modern consoles is backwards compatibility on Xbox One and Series X/S and yet FF as a whole usually gets shafted on Xbox. The pixel remasters would be some of the easiest things ever to port to Xbox and they're not on there.
cant see it running well on the Series S it was 720p to get 60fps in combat on PS5 and framerate was stuttering all the time out of combat
You could theoretically use Frame generation like BMW on PS5, but I think the biggest problem is the game was designed around the PS5's RAM. Series S has 8GB usable RAM whereas PS5 has about 14GB usable. Such a big difference
Thats a pretty easy fix. You just load the Series S ram with lower quality textures and sound and us upscaling to make up a difference.
Essay Pro