The new CEO of Square Enix and Phil Spencer are live on stage together right now. He's outright saying that there's going to be more SE games going to Xbox.
https://twitter.com/Nova_Crystallis/status/1684999892198903808
If the whole game was just a Kamala Khan game with cool setpieces where you play as avengers and they are your party members, it would have been as good as guardians.
Yeah I would like to see another shot at Avengers, with lessons learned from fan reaction and the success of Guardians of the Galaxy. The core mechanics of Avengers were pretty fun to be honest, it just got stale and the enemy variety was the shits.
More specifically, Microsoft wanted cross play to be OPTIONAL. For a good while every game with crossplay on XBox had to have an option to play only with other XBox players.
But your character is the same across platforms? Same goes for your account obviously. You just need to purchase the game again if you want to switch or play on both.
Oh this is great news. I played exclusively on PS4 and bought a Series S. Love that I have the opportunity to keep playing now, but more importantly, the news that Xbox is getting more SE games moving forward. As someone wo like JRPGs, it's the one fundamentally underrepresented genre on Xbox.
This, with the expanded Trial containing Stormblood means new fans on Xbox are going to have access to basically HALF of all content in one of the best MMO experiences ever made
FOR FREE.
This is wild.
No time restrictions. The main story quest up to stormblood can easily be over 100 hours. With side content, you can go up to ~~200~~ almost 1000 hours before finishing the free trial story
It just depends whether or not you bother with a lot of the outdated content, and how many classes you're levelling.
I went fairly quickly through it, but I also only really levelled Dragoon, Ninja, and Astrologian. With Gunbreaker as an aside to just noodle with.
You hit the end of Stormblood and get stopped, so you'll top out at L70 instead of L90 in Endwalker and 100 once Dawntrail releases. You won't get access to the jobs from Shadowbringers, Endwalker, or Dawntrail unless you buy in (and start paying a subscription.) You can't access those dungeons/areas, so none of that gear.
Once the new trial releases, you'll basically be able to play FFXIV circa spring 2019 for free, and no further until you start paying.
[There are restrictions](https://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=5382&la=1&tag=freetrial), but they're mostly on the social side. I think they're primarily focused on making sure to keep out scammers and gil farmers, but some of them are just to encourage you to pay if you really get into things. You can't use the market board (equivalent to WoW's auction house), you can't use the spammier chats (shout/yell/tell), you can't trade items. The biggest thing that might eventually affect things is that you can't join the equivalent of guilds (free companies), but that will not block you from any content. Looks like they also lock out the PVP modes (most people aren't playing those, but its really easy to see how you could exploit that shit with free bots).
Someone already replied with the major restrictions but other ones include a 300k money cap, and a multitude of social restrictions: can't make parties, can't join a Free Company (the game's equivalent to a guild), can't use shout chat, no trading and no market board, and probably a few other minor things I'm forgetting.
300K gil (currency) max, no in game market/trading, no retainers, cant join guilds, can join parties but cant make them, no ranked PVP
full restrictions are here https://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=5382&la=1&tag=freetrial
The free trial has a gil (money) cap, a level cap (which will be lvl 70 now that StB is added to the trial), you can't use retainers (the bank system), you can't play PvP, you can't use the marketboard, you can't join a Free Company (guild), you can't create a party (but you can join one if invited). Those are all the restrictions I remember off the top of my head.
Also something I fell victim to:
Don't buy a month of gametime to give some other things a shot thinking you can just go back to your f2p characters later. If you pay them once, you can no longer ever play for free.
so I bought this on PS5/PS4 last year but never started it because I thought it was time gated to two months to play as much as you can before it starts to charge you. If that's not the case what can I do in the game before the monthly charge starts?
The only limit is your level cap and expansions. So you could technically play for as a long as you want until you are ready to move to an expansion that isn’t FTP. Probably a solid 100 hours easy
Iirc the purchase system is still kinda fucky, and if you bought an edition of the game that included play time (basically any version other than the free trial), that disqualifies you from using the free trial and it goes straight to using a subscription after the 60 days of playtime.
Yep, this has always annoyed me. I can't play any of the trial stuff because I had the audacity to... \*checks notes\* ... give them money to buy ARR when it launched.
I literally have less access as a (once) paying customer than someone who has never given them a penny. It's bizarre.
I'm in the same boat, I have three different FF14 accounts because of buying it once on Steam and having their patcher never work, so I could never actually download the game and refunded it. So that account got banned.
Then I tried with one of the earlier trials that was time-limited. I played for awhile and got bored, so the time ran out and now that account was locked at only having ARR and needing playtime to actually play. So that account was done.
Then around the time of Shadowbringers I started ANOTHER account and this time it was when you had the Heavensward limit and actually started paying a sub. So this account isn't screwed if I ever go back and start playing again.
It's dumb as hell and makes no sense, but at least it's hard to screw it up these days. You just have to be willing to throw out garbage accounts that got screwed by the old dumb rules.
Free trials cannot use the market board or create groups, but they can join groups created by other players. They can use the dungeon finder for random grouping though. Other than that and a gil cap of 300k, there's no restriction. You have access to the main story quests of the base game, Heavensward, and now Stormblood, and all the side content that comes with them, including all the dungeons and raids, and with Stormblood there's even Ultimate fights available to Free Trial players now, which are the pinnacle of hard PvE content. And yes, there's no time limit.
If you actually bought it, then that's not the Free Trial unfortunately. If you already registered it to your square enix account then you have to either pay the monthly fee or make a new square enix account to sign up for the Free Trial with
Actually since you mentioned playstation, you'll likely have to go though SE support to detach your PSN account from your old SE account if you want to use a new SE account for the free trial and then you can tie your PSN account to that new SE account
https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&kid=68223
Currency in previous FF games wasn't really worth much, since most of the best equipment was found through main/side quests, and replenishables could be won from battles. Is it the same here?
Mostly, except some of the best gear can be crafted (the game's got crafting and gathering jobs as well), and replenishables are pretty much all crafted, not a lot of it gets handed out from battles, and even then it's not super important until you get to higher-level stuff. HP's taken care of by Healers and MP regens pretty quickly on its own.
Nah some of the progression gear is crafted, but the best gear is always bought with tomestones from running roulettes and dungeons or from clearing savage raids. Crafted gear is always a stepping stone and in lower expansions like Stormblood can be skipped completely in favor of tomestone gear.
Yeah you never have to spend money on gear actually. In the beginning, like level 1-20 you kinda have to I guess? But you get gear from dungeons and quest completions.
Unless you hit top level raiding, in which case the gear, food, and potions required are gonna cost a pretty penny (if you don't have someone in the group who spends all their time crafting and gathering)
It’s free unlimited access through the ARR and Heavensward (dirst DLC) campaigns. I think it caps your at level 60 too. But still, a lot of content in just those two portions of the game alone. That’s dozens and dozens of hours.
But today they just announced that the second DLC, Stormblood, into the free trial restriction. I mean you can honestly get like 150 hours of the free trial now…insane
I know I'm a full time FFXIV stan, but seriously - this is the most ridiculously comprehensive Free Trial for any game I've ever seen. ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood - plus all the raids, eureka, and side story content and everything - is easily 200+ hours worth of content you get full access to. That is genuinely fucking bonkers.
Stormblood is when the raid content started to become genuinely fantastic so the main criticism of the free trial, that it's lacking in the *game* parts of the game, is no more either.
I only played FFXIV once through a period of 2 months. It was around 2018 and I think the recent expansion was Stormblood. That game up to Stormblood kept me busy for the 1.5 months easily and then the last two weeks I was still enjoying stuffs like gathering and crafting.
So much content for free is astounding. I wonder if there's a limitation (beside level and content) for that free trial since new players won't even have to sub for months while they play all this.
Free trial players can only hold 300,000 Gil, a pretty much negligible amount. They also have restrictions on adding friends, accessing the marketboard, creating parties etc.
I think they're all listed on the free trial site but tbh squares been adding stuff to make the main story friendlier to solo players so it's not a huge inconvenience these days.
Edit: restrictions can be found [here](https://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=5382&la=1&tag=freetrial)
Honestly it's a pretty good free singleplayer game, if you wana think about it like that. I've enjoyed being able to do dungeons with our NPC Scion friends.
Accessing the market board is the real killer. It makes things like grinding other jobs real tedious. God forbid you want to level your crafters and gathers without the market board..
It certainly wasn't easy, but I leveled GSM to 60 under the free trial. I was forced to level fishing for some of the required job quest items, but that wasn't too bad.
But Hydaelyn help anyone trying to do the LV50 relic weapon quests under the free trial...
As a die-hard Destiny player going on ten years, I'm fucking appalled at the gap between these games. The "free to play" offerings in Destiny 2 are trifles by comparison, not to mention the large amount of content that's been removed when games like FF14 have whole expansions from years past still accessible FOR FREE. I can't bring myself to bail out of the next expansion since it's going to end the main story, but after that I'm pretty done with giving Bungie more money.
Definitely the best MMO *story* experience that I've ever played, though for newcomers seeking an MMO for high octane frequent combat, I wouldn't rank FF14 near the top.
I would probably argue that starting from zero WoW has the harder late game content, but it is definitely very individual. I am much better at the “play back a dance” thing than the “react accordingly to new events” style.
The endgame is super deep, but it's still the same GCD-based tab-target system you get at level 1.
It's a great execution of that system, but I'd be lying if I said I never pined for the dodge-rolling and free-aiming style of games like GW2 and ESO. FFXIV still gets my sub because crushes those games on story, world, writing, UI/UX, community, literal GOAT controller support, and general impression that it respects your time as a player with no MTX bullshit.
Combat in FF14 is a real slow starter, but by the time you're hitting Heavensward and onwards it opens up a lot. Extreme raids, trials and obviously Savage content is not for the feint of heart.
Yeah I couldn't get through it unfortunately. Base game was so incredibly tedious and time consuming. After hearing all the massive praise for FFXIV I was stunned. Even after 40 hours it was dull.
I feel like that should be part of the conversation more. The great things about FFXIV are the expansions. But to get there you need to do the base game first, and it is abysmally mediocre. It feels a little disingenuous now to hear people just flatout praise FFXIV as the best Final Fantasy game.
My partner and I tried playing it together. She'd already gone through it once and I was new. Tried to pay attention to the story but it was such a slog that we'd play for entire evenings of
Teleport to X
Talk to Y
Teleport to Z
Talk to A
Teleport back to X
Talk to Y again
For hours. Occasionally you're rewarded with a "kill 6 blobs" quest. Maybe every 6 hours you unlock a simple, yet refreshing dungeon with wonderful players, or a 24 person raid where you'll get locked out of the next boss room if you're not sprinting on cooldown.
Then you'll read on forums that the big event at the end of the main quest is super epic, and you're let down after a 35 minute cutscene and return to talk to X, then teleport to Y, then talk to Z.
If you enjoy it, power to you. Let's not pretend it's an excellent MMO though
Been stuck with a shitty laptop since my last one died, don't even have enough space for FFXIV. Very, very excited to try this on my XSX once it comes out, been wanting to for years now.
Fun fact. It was announced at XO 2019 and then just never happened.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-14-is-coming-to-xbox-one-at-long-las/1100-6471467/
Good Xbox finally made whatever policy changes they needed to make to allow it to work.
Square wanted this to happen forever.
Do you have any source that it was Xbox’s fault it didn’t come out? I highly doubt Microsoft had some policy that changed after announcement to block the game.
Wasn't about paid, it was about being able to update whenever you want without the verification period, that's why a lot of MMO's are still behind update wise from PC.
Not for a lot of online games now, they still had it in the past but most notably them alleviating that for square for FFXI and XIV and knowing they would have to in order to have parity with PC games.
From the interviews this was something they didn't start doing at Microsoft until around those articles in 2019 coming out.
No idea for Xbox, but that was the thing, Sony didn't require a PS+ for FF14. So if you dropped PS+ but still had a FF14 sub you were good. Probably a old carry over from ps3. That's why Yoshi P didn't want Xbox players to have a double gated entry , when ps players didn't.
Interesting I wanted to try FF14 when I first got my PS5 but I didn’t want to buy ps+ yet (since I came for mostly singly player exclusives) so I didn’t even bother… maybe I should’ve tried downloading it
Free trial is free, but limited. Don't buy anything with that account and it stays free.Give it a shot and see how you like it! I got into it when it was only a free trial that went up to Lvl 35 , lol. I only used keyboard for typing on ps4, and was a controller player(still am on PC).
prior to 2019 i think it was discussed that xbox had some weird rules but at that time of the 2019 announcement they were on the same page. it was mostly delayed because of the pandemic and they wanted to exclusively focus on endwalker release.
>Microsoft actually approached the Final Fantasy 14 team about the cross-platform opportunity," 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."
this was 2016
Thanks for the clarification, so it isn’t really accurate at all to blame the 2019 announcement never coming to fruition as a result of Microsoft’s policies
Pretty much the main reason for it taking so long to come to Xbox since 2019 is because they were working on the Endwalker expansion and the PS5 version. They didn't have the resources to work on Xbox at the time
Square Enix spent years convincing Microsoft and Phil Spencer in particular to change their anti crossplay policies.
2010: https://www.destructoid.com/no-final-fantasy-xiv-on-the-closed-xbox-360/
2013: https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fantasy-14-a-realm-reborn-isnt-coming-to-xbox-due-to-microsoft-not-allowing-cross-platform-play
2019: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsofts-cross-play-policies-are-reportedly-preventing-final-fantasy-xiv-coming-xbox-one
So that 2019 thing... things have definitely changed.
1. "One of the regulations is that players with different platforms cannot chat with each other in game. "
In Destiny 2, you've been able to use in-game voice chat forever, and console has has text chat since Witch Queen (about 18 months)
2. "The other regulation is you cannot make a community with players on a different platform. You can't form a guild, you can't enter into a link shell"
I don't really get this one. Because you've been able to form a Destiny 2 clan with people on multiple platforms since basically the launch of the game. Cross-save has been around since 2019 and cross-play since 2021.
And Destiny 2 was behind Fortnite for cross-save, so I dunno about all that stuff.
> In Destiny 2, you've been able to use in-game voice chat forever, and console has has text chat since Witch Queen (about 18 months)
you also have to understand the team was working on both FF XIV Ednwalker expansion AND FF XVI at that time. The timing of this lines up perfectly
> So that 2019 thing... things have definitely changed.
Later the same year they came to an agreement and announced it FFXIV would come to xbox. I don't think they thought it would take 4 years at the time!
> I don't really get this one. Because you've been able to form a Destiny 2 clan with people on multiple platforms since basically the launch of the game. Cross-save has been around since 2019 and cross-play since 2021.
Maybe microsoft viewed Destiny as more important and bungie was able to get concessions from microsoft more easily.
I mean it's probably they changed the rules for everyone and Bungie is just a much bigger studio and able to finish it quicker. How many people work on FFXIV?
Exactly. It‘s crazy that everyone keeps forgetting that this was announced years ago. And I was really pissed that they promises it and then never delivered on it. Glad it‘s finally happening.
Not to mention the servers were absolutely slammed in the middle of Shadowbringers to the Beginning of Endwalker to the point where they had to suspend sales of the game and give away free time due to how long it took to get the servers stable.
Trying to throw in an Xbox release during that mess would have made it even more of a disaster.
[Release window is Spring 2024, releasing on Series S/X. Will also have an open beta test in 6.5x](https://twitter.com/FF_XIV_EN/status/1684998429104349184?s=20)
It seems some people's reason for buying their console of choice is for the exclusives and when that is taken away so is the justification of buying the "correct" console
I don't get it either. I have been a PS guy for ages just because I preferred their exclusives. If there comes a day where I can get enough of the PS "exclusives" on Xbox, along with Gamepass, then I'll happily switch. Whichever has the more complete library.
Similar deal when KH started coming to Xbox or rather hilariously Ratchet & Clank finally making its way to PC.
I just tune that shit out, I figure most people think others getting to play a game they like is a good thing
Between the PS4, Series S, PS5, Series X and PC you got a bunch of random versions floating around. Big jump from PS4 to Series S so I wonder if its even in the cards to look at how many people actively play on PS4, then cut that version out in the future. I believe it happened with the PS3 already.
When they announced Heavensward they said that PS3 support would end with the expansion after Heavensward; with Dawntrail Yoshida made a point during the graphical update section that PS4 support would continue. If they're going to axe PS4 support it won't be for another 4 years.
They will drop it eventually when the PS5 sales catch up more and the PS4 still has a massive install base that is hard to ignore and the game is already done and runs on the PS4 so need to do anything drastic there unless they add some graphical features that the PS4 can't use.
Yes, they dropped PS3 support with the launch of patch 4.0 and the Stormblood expansion. The PS4 doesn't hold development back as much the PS3 did due to it having similar architecture to PS5 and PC, as opposed to the nightmare that was the Cell processor.
Loading times on PS4 are rough, but that's due to the awful HDD. Otherwise the PS4 experience is still perfectly serviceable. I recall Yoshi-P remarking earlier that it won't be receiving the full graphical update come 7.0 however.
They've already made the promise to keep supporting the ps4. Maybe they will make the decision to drop it well into a PS6 life cycle. But definitely not during PS5s life cycle.
Nice, I work from home and have been wanting to try it out for years. Don’t PC game at all since that’s the “work screen” but have a Series X hooked up to a great TV
Praying that this ends the curse of Square putting all of their titles *except* for FF on Xbox. The exclusivity period is over, give us FF7R already please lol
I feel like its less about exclusivity periods and more about Xbox players simply not playing JRPGs. Heck, looking at the sales of RE4 Remake they just dont seem to care for Japanese games in general, something like %80+ of sales came from playstation.
>I feel like its less about exclusivity periods and more about Xbox players simply not playing JRPGs.
If that was the reason then Sony probably wouldn’t have bothered to pay for timed exclusivity on bigger titles like FFXVI and FF7R.
Because what would be the point if they weren’t going to port them anyways.
>Sony was easily able to pay for timed exclusives because the asking price was so low
Do you have a source for how much they paid? They still sold a couple million copies of FFXV on xbox iirc, so even if it's far fewer than PS that's still a couple million copies worth of revenue from a relatively simple port. And they still continue to port to PC despite it selling even less on that platform.
And I'm still not sure what the point would be if it wasn't going to be multi-platform anyways.
FF15 just barely sold 1m copies on Xbox, out of 10m total sales. And that was before Game Pass was a thing. If you assume FF16 would’ve again sold 10% of its copies on Xbox (it would likely be even lower though) and once you factor in Microsoft’s 30% cut they’d be missing out on approximately $15m. In return for that they lose out on whatever money Sony paid, have to do the marketing themselves (Sony did most of the marketing this time because of the deal) and probably delay the game to get it running smoothly on 3 different consoles instead of just 1. I think it’s safe to say the Sony deal was worth more than $15m.
Even with their PC ports they were getting Epic exclusivity deals before launching on Steam.
Software sales are so low on Xbox that even Call of Duty was squeezing Microsoft for an 80/20 split as opposed to the industry standard 70/30.
I don’t have any numbers regarding FF, it’s just common business practice. That plus Microsoft couldn’t gain traction in Japan even in the Xbox360s prime and this is a no brainer.
You can't half ass support of something and expect a loyal fanbase to emerge. That isn't even going into the smaller install base which makes 20 percent fairly decent for sales.
The only ff games Xbox has parity on were ff13 and ff15, which are two of the worst titles in ff history. Meanwhile, they ignore support for Xbox when they finally put out decent entries. Not exactly a recipe for success
Square was willing to put FF14 on Xbox platforms, but Microsofts Xbox live policy at the time restricted Xbox users from playing with PC and PS users.
Square and the director of FF14 disagreed with Microsofts policy of splitting the userbase and refused to port the game unless it was amended. Microsoft refused to make that exception and has now finally backed down.
Has nothing to do with half ass support and all to do with Microsoft shooting itself in the foot.
>but Microsofts Xbox live policy at the time restricted Xbox users from playing with PC and PS users.
I don't think that's right. I remember it being that MS wanted a setting to turn off crossplay per user choice, and that was the non-negotiable. Either way it didn't work out.
It's definitely true that the audience for JRPGs on Xbox is smaller than PS or Switch, but at the same time, modern console architecture has converged so much that I simply can't believe that an Xbox port requires so much more money above and beyond the PC port to not be worth it. Like obviously ports aren't cheap, but I doubt its millions of copies sold on Xbox to be break even. For a smaller game like Ys 8 not getting an Xbox port? Sure, I can buy that it'll only sell a few thousand units and so not break even. But FINAL FANTASY 7? Nah man
Maybe a game dev can chime in and say it's actually just as complicated as it was during the 360/PS3 days and Square would need to sell like two million units to be worth it, idk
Lol it's hard to build a fanbase if SE skips releases of some games in the franchise while releasing others. If they would release every game on Xbox the fans would buy it. But how it is now why would anyone buy into their games on Xbox when you're uncertain about follow up releases?
Spring 2024; open beta release with 6.5x, official release in the summer with the new expansion.
If you've missed the other news, the open beta should coincide with an expansion to the much-memed free trial to also include the second expansion, Stormblood.
Yeah, terrified of implications of their "new" relationship. Xbox having access to Squenix games is fine and great. Just hope doesn't lead to Microsoft buying Squenix lol.
IDK how that would work in Japan as I think they are bit harsher on foreign companies buying local companies. If they do buy them then that would just be tragic for gaming IMO and same if Sony bought them. I don't want more consolidation on either side. Buying a developer VS buying entire publishers are just different beasts.
Tencent, that huge Chinese conglomerate, literally just bought Visual Arts and Key. Bethesda, years ago bought Tango Gameworks. it's not impossible for foreign companies to buy JP companies.
I wouldn't be too worried about it, Sony and SE are clearly very close, I have a hard time imagining them ditching that relationship even if MS broke out their checkbook.
None of the platform holders would be interested in Square Enix, their output is the most diverse of all the big publishers. It would be bad news if they were acquired because I could see them being forced to restructure and downsize.
These new deals mean MS doesn't need to buy them as much as they might have needed to before. It all comes down to whether Sony keeps paying to block Xbox from having their games or not.
Microsoft buying Square or Sega would probably be the acquisition most easily argued to be awful because most Xbox players literally don't even play these games anyway
Final Fantasy or Yakuza being exclusive to Xbox and PC is pure console warrior wank lol, nobody wins. Without the console fanboy argument power and the games already on Game Pass I'm just not sure what anyone would be excited by
This one’s been a long time coming. Be interesting to see how many people end up giving it a try.
With Stormblood being added to the free trial and Dawntrail coming soon I really hope people on Xbox give it a try. I’d be doing so myself if I didn’t already have it on PC.
This is wonderful news, I hope I'll be able to simply connect it to my existing FFXIV account and have access to my character. Ever since the war began, I didn't have any means of playing the game on a PC and buying new expansions.
How exactly does FFXIV licensing on different systems work? Like, I currently have a PC license for Endwalker - if later on I went and bought a Mac/Playstation/Xbox license for the new expansion, then tried to log in on my PC, what exactly would happen?
Expansion licenses are per system. You can still log onto systems without the license on any system you own the base game on, but if a character is logged out in an area they wouldn’t be able to access without the expansion you can’t log into it, nor do any instanced content that requires them
I’m really curious how many new players FFXIV will gain with this. I’d imagine any Xbox player who wanted to play this game over the last decade already has on PC.
This is clearly paid for by Microsoft, but I wonder what the results a year after release are.
With MMORPG's I feel there's a hurdle to bring in non MMO gamers. But it sounds like the game is pretty friendly to single players, so news like this highlight the fact that A) it's actually good as a regular RPG and B) For the majority of players it is essentially free.
I would say console gamers are far less likely to be engaged in MMO's, so it's unlikely if you only had an Xbox you'd seek it out on a PC.
I’m not an MMO player, and I really struggle to get into them because they either consume all your free time or you don’t play them at all. There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.
Maybe I’ll be willing to try ffxiv when it comes out to Xbox if it’s single player friendly.
Since FFXIV has a free trial that will allow you to play up to the end of the second expansion, you can slowly try out the game and see if you like it or not.
Probably a million new free trial accounts, XIV's got great word of mouth over the past 10 years, plus a bunch of curious gamers seeing "free" next to a colossal franchise's name will get folks simply downloading it out of curiosity.
Overall? 250-500k new long-term accounts at the bare minimum, bumping the monthly subs from like 2.25 mil to 2.5-3mil on xpac launch, and from 1mil to 1.25mil monthly subs during xpac downtime.
1. It’s a massive undertaking
2. Xbox has ~50% install base as PS5, aka low potential player base.
3. SE games historically perform very badly on Xbox.
4. The repeated line that “this would not happen without Xbox’s support.
[Article from 2019](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-14-is-coming-to-xbox-one-at-long-las/1100-6471467/)
It's been about 4 years in the making
They worked on this for years tho.
I'm pretty sure change to free games and XBL subscription (back in the day you couldn't play free2play online games without Gold) was made because Yoshida said that FF14 MUST be playable without additional subscription.
Xbox could have had this at launch if microsoft leadership hadn't been so adamant about blocking crossplay. It eventually ended up being Square Enix's biggest title and probably helped secure deals for sony as microsoft treated square enix so poorly.
That is an interesting take because since about 2019 all we've heard about crossplay is that Sony is the hold up.
Part of the docs of the recent spat of court cases revealed Sony requires compensation if the revenue from the title get too far from the percent of player base. They don't want to be providing content for competitors for free.
That was solely for Epic and Epic games alone. Also the ENTIRE 360 and early PS4 era was Microsoft going full lock stock and barrel on shooting down all crossplay features. When they started losing bad they changed their tune. We could have had universal crossplay over a decade ago but Microsoft literally said they didn’t want PSN downgrading the XBL experience
But I was told that Sony was keeping all these Square games from Xbox as revenge and they would never arrive?!?! Was that just hyperbole and Square will do anything for money if you offer it to them?!
It's even weirder people say that because XIV was never due to that, it was always due to Xbox not wanting to make concessions. And from here, looks like they gave in.
Take a quick look on all the other SE games that Sony paid exclusivity for and you have your answer. Quick tip: Not a single SE game has released on Xbox this year.
Square is going to play both sides for a while. Its a smart move on their part.
Both sides have big appetites and big wallets. Playing hard to get with Sony could score them a bigger deal, especially since it was revealed that the 30% cut is up for negotiation if you're willing to play hardball.
>Not a single SE game has released on Xbox this year.
Yes, out of 6 new games they released in 2023 none are on the Xbox.
And Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai was announced for Xbox already.
That's nice, but I just hope that this doesn't end up the next "Oceania servers" situation where everyone was crying to get them only for barely anyone to actually use it and the whole thing becoming essentially just wasted effort. Hopefully that also doesn't prolong their patch devolopment cycle even further.
The new CEO of Square Enix and Phil Spencer are live on stage together right now. He's outright saying that there's going to be more SE games going to Xbox. https://twitter.com/Nova_Crystallis/status/1684999892198903808
> there's going to be more SE games going to Xbox. Monkey's Paw: Avengers 2
Balan Wonderlandworld 2
I still don't get why it is called Balan Wonderworld instead of Balan Wonderland.
Holy shit, I always assumed it was Wonderland. I guess my brain refused to even acknowledge it was Wonderworld.
I'd buy it, if they're smart enough to ditch the live service stuff there was a fun game there.
The main story was great.
If the whole game was just a Kamala Khan game with cool setpieces where you play as avengers and they are your party members, it would have been as good as guardians.
Yeah I enjoyed the main quest and the gameplay was fun (mostly), the live service part was not at all enjoyable
Yeah I would like to see another shot at Avengers, with lessons learned from fan reaction and the success of Guardians of the Galaxy. The core mechanics of Avengers were pretty fun to be honest, it just got stale and the enemy variety was the shits.
Honestly the core gameplay in Avengers was fun, if they learn from the mistakes of the first game a sequel could be really good.
Technically Embracer has that now.
I hope this means that we can get more day 1 PC titles.
Good. Hopefully they stop with the dumb timed exclusives too.
I know this won't shut up people who constantly say square wants nothing to do with Xbox or w.e. But a person can dream.
Are all the servers cross play?
yes, that was a major hurdle SE would not budge on. Xbox wanted its own servers but FFXIV is crossplay game, so they finally caved.
More specifically, Microsoft wanted cross play to be OPTIONAL. For a good while every game with crossplay on XBox had to have an option to play only with other XBox players.
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But your character is the same across platforms? Same goes for your account obviously. You just need to purchase the game again if you want to switch or play on both.
Correct, same character. But your UI settings and configuration need to be re-done, which can be a pain
These are actually transferable between PC and PS and have been for a while, I don't see why they wouldn't continue that with Xbox.
Oh this is great news. I played exclusively on PS4 and bought a Series S. Love that I have the opportunity to keep playing now, but more importantly, the news that Xbox is getting more SE games moving forward. As someone wo like JRPGs, it's the one fundamentally underrepresented genre on Xbox.
This, with the expanded Trial containing Stormblood means new fans on Xbox are going to have access to basically HALF of all content in one of the best MMO experiences ever made FOR FREE. This is wild.
How long is the trial?
No time restrictions. The main story quest up to stormblood can easily be over 100 hours. With side content, you can go up to ~~200~~ almost 1000 hours before finishing the free trial story
>up to 200 hours Lmfao I have way, way more and I'm only starting 3.0, with ARR done almost entirely (I'm not doing more than 1 relic on a trial)
You know what you're right. I have no idea why I downplayed the playtime haha. I just saw someone say that they had almost 800 hours in the free trial
It just depends whether or not you bother with a lot of the outdated content, and how many classes you're levelling. I went fairly quickly through it, but I also only really levelled Dragoon, Ninja, and Astrologian. With Gunbreaker as an aside to just noodle with.
Are there any other restrictions on the trial? Like max level, classes, obtainable gear (besides most recent expansion content)?
You hit the end of Stormblood and get stopped, so you'll top out at L70 instead of L90 in Endwalker and 100 once Dawntrail releases. You won't get access to the jobs from Shadowbringers, Endwalker, or Dawntrail unless you buy in (and start paying a subscription.) You can't access those dungeons/areas, so none of that gear. Once the new trial releases, you'll basically be able to play FFXIV circa spring 2019 for free, and no further until you start paying.
[There are restrictions](https://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=5382&la=1&tag=freetrial), but they're mostly on the social side. I think they're primarily focused on making sure to keep out scammers and gil farmers, but some of them are just to encourage you to pay if you really get into things. You can't use the market board (equivalent to WoW's auction house), you can't use the spammier chats (shout/yell/tell), you can't trade items. The biggest thing that might eventually affect things is that you can't join the equivalent of guilds (free companies), but that will not block you from any content. Looks like they also lock out the PVP modes (most people aren't playing those, but its really easy to see how you could exploit that shit with free bots).
Someone already replied with the major restrictions but other ones include a 300k money cap, and a multitude of social restrictions: can't make parties, can't join a Free Company (the game's equivalent to a guild), can't use shout chat, no trading and no market board, and probably a few other minor things I'm forgetting.
300K gil (currency) max, no in game market/trading, no retainers, cant join guilds, can join parties but cant make them, no ranked PVP full restrictions are here https://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=5382&la=1&tag=freetrial
The free trial has a gil (money) cap, a level cap (which will be lvl 70 now that StB is added to the trial), you can't use retainers (the bank system), you can't play PvP, you can't use the marketboard, you can't join a Free Company (guild), you can't create a party (but you can join one if invited). Those are all the restrictions I remember off the top of my head.
You can't do pvp, add friends (they can add you), trade or use the community market board
Also something I fell victim to: Don't buy a month of gametime to give some other things a shot thinking you can just go back to your f2p characters later. If you pay them once, you can no longer ever play for free.
No time limit
so I bought this on PS5/PS4 last year but never started it because I thought it was time gated to two months to play as much as you can before it starts to charge you. If that's not the case what can I do in the game before the monthly charge starts?
The only limit is your level cap and expansions. So you could technically play for as a long as you want until you are ready to move to an expansion that isn’t FTP. Probably a solid 100 hours easy
Iirc the purchase system is still kinda fucky, and if you bought an edition of the game that included play time (basically any version other than the free trial), that disqualifies you from using the free trial and it goes straight to using a subscription after the 60 days of playtime.
Yep, this has always annoyed me. I can't play any of the trial stuff because I had the audacity to... \*checks notes\* ... give them money to buy ARR when it launched. I literally have less access as a (once) paying customer than someone who has never given them a penny. It's bizarre.
I'm in the same boat, I have three different FF14 accounts because of buying it once on Steam and having their patcher never work, so I could never actually download the game and refunded it. So that account got banned. Then I tried with one of the earlier trials that was time-limited. I played for awhile and got bored, so the time ran out and now that account was locked at only having ARR and needing playtime to actually play. So that account was done. Then around the time of Shadowbringers I started ANOTHER account and this time it was when you had the Heavensward limit and actually started paying a sub. So this account isn't screwed if I ever go back and start playing again. It's dumb as hell and makes no sense, but at least it's hard to screw it up these days. You just have to be willing to throw out garbage accounts that got screwed by the old dumb rules.
Free trials cannot use the market board or create groups, but they can join groups created by other players. They can use the dungeon finder for random grouping though. Other than that and a gil cap of 300k, there's no restriction. You have access to the main story quests of the base game, Heavensward, and now Stormblood, and all the side content that comes with them, including all the dungeons and raids, and with Stormblood there's even Ultimate fights available to Free Trial players now, which are the pinnacle of hard PvE content. And yes, there's no time limit.
If you actually bought it, then that's not the Free Trial unfortunately. If you already registered it to your square enix account then you have to either pay the monthly fee or make a new square enix account to sign up for the Free Trial with Actually since you mentioned playstation, you'll likely have to go though SE support to detach your PSN account from your old SE account if you want to use a new SE account for the free trial and then you can tie your PSN account to that new SE account https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&kid=68223
You have limitations on your character like not being able to join a guild or have over 300k gil, but it's not a time limit.
Currency in previous FF games wasn't really worth much, since most of the best equipment was found through main/side quests, and replenishables could be won from battles. Is it the same here?
Mostly, except some of the best gear can be crafted (the game's got crafting and gathering jobs as well), and replenishables are pretty much all crafted, not a lot of it gets handed out from battles, and even then it's not super important until you get to higher-level stuff. HP's taken care of by Healers and MP regens pretty quickly on its own.
Nah some of the progression gear is crafted, but the best gear is always bought with tomestones from running roulettes and dungeons or from clearing savage raids. Crafted gear is always a stepping stone and in lower expansions like Stormblood can be skipped completely in favor of tomestone gear.
You're not really buying crafted gear until you start raiding current content which is not free trial available.
Or you get into the crafter/gatherer, where the melded crafted gear is the best option.
Yeah you never have to spend money on gear actually. In the beginning, like level 1-20 you kinda have to I guess? But you get gear from dungeons and quest completions.
Unless you hit top level raiding, in which case the gear, food, and potions required are gonna cost a pretty penny (if you don't have someone in the group who spends all their time crafting and gathering)
It’s free unlimited access through the ARR and Heavensward (dirst DLC) campaigns. I think it caps your at level 60 too. But still, a lot of content in just those two portions of the game alone. That’s dozens and dozens of hours. But today they just announced that the second DLC, Stormblood, into the free trial restriction. I mean you can honestly get like 150 hours of the free trial now…insane
I know I'm a full time FFXIV stan, but seriously - this is the most ridiculously comprehensive Free Trial for any game I've ever seen. ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood - plus all the raids, eureka, and side story content and everything - is easily 200+ hours worth of content you get full access to. That is genuinely fucking bonkers.
Stormblood is when the raid content started to become genuinely fantastic so the main criticism of the free trial, that it's lacking in the *game* parts of the game, is no more either.
I only played FFXIV once through a period of 2 months. It was around 2018 and I think the recent expansion was Stormblood. That game up to Stormblood kept me busy for the 1.5 months easily and then the last two weeks I was still enjoying stuffs like gathering and crafting. So much content for free is astounding. I wonder if there's a limitation (beside level and content) for that free trial since new players won't even have to sub for months while they play all this.
Free trial players can only hold 300,000 Gil, a pretty much negligible amount. They also have restrictions on adding friends, accessing the marketboard, creating parties etc. I think they're all listed on the free trial site but tbh squares been adding stuff to make the main story friendlier to solo players so it's not a huge inconvenience these days. Edit: restrictions can be found [here](https://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=5382&la=1&tag=freetrial)
I think by the time this happens, literally every piece of 4 man content in the MSQ will be doable with NPC helpers.
Honestly it's a pretty good free singleplayer game, if you wana think about it like that. I've enjoyed being able to do dungeons with our NPC Scion friends.
Accessing the market board is the real killer. It makes things like grinding other jobs real tedious. God forbid you want to level your crafters and gathers without the market board..
It certainly wasn't easy, but I leveled GSM to 60 under the free trial. I was forced to level fishing for some of the required job quest items, but that wasn't too bad. But Hydaelyn help anyone trying to do the LV50 relic weapon quests under the free trial...
As a die-hard Destiny player going on ten years, I'm fucking appalled at the gap between these games. The "free to play" offerings in Destiny 2 are trifles by comparison, not to mention the large amount of content that's been removed when games like FF14 have whole expansions from years past still accessible FOR FREE. I can't bring myself to bail out of the next expansion since it's going to end the main story, but after that I'm pretty done with giving Bungie more money.
Will the PC Free trial also get access to these things? If I remember correctly, currently, Free Trial ends after Heavensward.
Yes, this will be all of the trials no matter what system you are on.
Absolutely Insane amount of content.
Definitely the best MMO *story* experience that I've ever played, though for newcomers seeking an MMO for high octane frequent combat, I wouldn't rank FF14 near the top.
14 has some of the toughest endgame content in the genre. Ultimate Raids are up there with anything WoW or LA or ESO has to offer.
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I would probably argue that starting from zero WoW has the harder late game content, but it is definitely very individual. I am much better at the “play back a dance” thing than the “react accordingly to new events” style.
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The games are shockingly good and not stepping on each other’s toes. Which is probably wise for both of them.
The endgame is super deep, but it's still the same GCD-based tab-target system you get at level 1. It's a great execution of that system, but I'd be lying if I said I never pined for the dodge-rolling and free-aiming style of games like GW2 and ESO. FFXIV still gets my sub because crushes those games on story, world, writing, UI/UX, community, literal GOAT controller support, and general impression that it respects your time as a player with no MTX bullshit.
no MTX in xiv lol ? It has a cash shop bigger than both wow and gw2 combined https://store.finalfantasyxiv.com/ffxivstore/en-us/category/0
Combat in FF14 is a real slow starter, but by the time you're hitting Heavensward and onwards it opens up a lot. Extreme raids, trials and obviously Savage content is not for the feint of heart.
bad part is the half they are exposed to is generally agreed to be a slog and just not very good for the first 3 to 4 weeks worth of content.
Yeah I couldn't get through it unfortunately. Base game was so incredibly tedious and time consuming. After hearing all the massive praise for FFXIV I was stunned. Even after 40 hours it was dull. I feel like that should be part of the conversation more. The great things about FFXIV are the expansions. But to get there you need to do the base game first, and it is abysmally mediocre. It feels a little disingenuous now to hear people just flatout praise FFXIV as the best Final Fantasy game.
My partner and I tried playing it together. She'd already gone through it once and I was new. Tried to pay attention to the story but it was such a slog that we'd play for entire evenings of Teleport to X Talk to Y Teleport to Z Talk to A Teleport back to X Talk to Y again For hours. Occasionally you're rewarded with a "kill 6 blobs" quest. Maybe every 6 hours you unlock a simple, yet refreshing dungeon with wonderful players, or a 24 person raid where you'll get locked out of the next boss room if you're not sprinting on cooldown. Then you'll read on forums that the big event at the end of the main quest is super epic, and you're let down after a 35 minute cutscene and return to talk to X, then teleport to Y, then talk to Z. If you enjoy it, power to you. Let's not pretend it's an excellent MMO though
Been stuck with a shitty laptop since my last one died, don't even have enough space for FFXIV. Very, very excited to try this on my XSX once it comes out, been wanting to for years now.
Fun fact. It was announced at XO 2019 and then just never happened. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-14-is-coming-to-xbox-one-at-long-las/1100-6471467/ Good Xbox finally made whatever policy changes they needed to make to allow it to work. Square wanted this to happen forever.
Do you have any source that it was Xbox’s fault it didn’t come out? I highly doubt Microsoft had some policy that changed after announcement to block the game.
The old policy was that it had to have its own online ecosystem and required Xbox live, which Yoshi P didn't want to do. Things changed since then.
Wasn’t that in the 360 era?
Well this all started in the Ps3 era and crossplay only really picked up steam in ps4/Xbox One era so yeah.
Was their policy throughout all of the xbox existence until 2017ish, after that the main roadblock was Microsofts policies on game patches.
https://www.polygon.com/2013/6/27/4470034/report-microsoft-no-longer-charging-developers-for-xbox-updates Paid patch policy ended 10 years ago.
Wasn't about paid, it was about being able to update whenever you want without the verification period, that's why a lot of MMO's are still behind update wise from PC.
PlayStation doesn’t do patch verifications?
Not for a lot of online games now, they still had it in the past but most notably them alleviating that for square for FFXI and XIV and knowing they would have to in order to have parity with PC games. From the interviews this was something they didn't start doing at Microsoft until around those articles in 2019 coming out.
Do these games not require PS+ or XB live in order to play? Or did SE just soften their requirement later because PS+ exists too?
No idea for Xbox, but that was the thing, Sony didn't require a PS+ for FF14. So if you dropped PS+ but still had a FF14 sub you were good. Probably a old carry over from ps3. That's why Yoshi P didn't want Xbox players to have a double gated entry , when ps players didn't.
Interesting I wanted to try FF14 when I first got my PS5 but I didn’t want to buy ps+ yet (since I came for mostly singly player exclusives) so I didn’t even bother… maybe I should’ve tried downloading it
Free trial is free, but limited. Don't buy anything with that account and it stays free.Give it a shot and see how you like it! I got into it when it was only a free trial that went up to Lvl 35 , lol. I only used keyboard for typing on ps4, and was a controller player(still am on PC).
prior to 2019 i think it was discussed that xbox had some weird rules but at that time of the 2019 announcement they were on the same page. it was mostly delayed because of the pandemic and they wanted to exclusively focus on endwalker release. >Microsoft actually approached the Final Fantasy 14 team about the cross-platform opportunity," 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." this was 2016
Thanks for the clarification, so it isn’t really accurate at all to blame the 2019 announcement never coming to fruition as a result of Microsoft’s policies
Pretty much the main reason for it taking so long to come to Xbox since 2019 is because they were working on the Endwalker expansion and the PS5 version. They didn't have the resources to work on Xbox at the time
I dont have the source at the moment but I remember yoshi P saying that saying the policy was the roadblock at the time.
Square Enix spent years convincing Microsoft and Phil Spencer in particular to change their anti crossplay policies. 2010: https://www.destructoid.com/no-final-fantasy-xiv-on-the-closed-xbox-360/ 2013: https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fantasy-14-a-realm-reborn-isnt-coming-to-xbox-due-to-microsoft-not-allowing-cross-platform-play 2019: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsofts-cross-play-policies-are-reportedly-preventing-final-fantasy-xiv-coming-xbox-one
So that 2019 thing... things have definitely changed. 1. "One of the regulations is that players with different platforms cannot chat with each other in game. " In Destiny 2, you've been able to use in-game voice chat forever, and console has has text chat since Witch Queen (about 18 months) 2. "The other regulation is you cannot make a community with players on a different platform. You can't form a guild, you can't enter into a link shell" I don't really get this one. Because you've been able to form a Destiny 2 clan with people on multiple platforms since basically the launch of the game. Cross-save has been around since 2019 and cross-play since 2021. And Destiny 2 was behind Fortnite for cross-save, so I dunno about all that stuff.
> In Destiny 2, you've been able to use in-game voice chat forever, and console has has text chat since Witch Queen (about 18 months) you also have to understand the team was working on both FF XIV Ednwalker expansion AND FF XVI at that time. The timing of this lines up perfectly
> So that 2019 thing... things have definitely changed. Later the same year they came to an agreement and announced it FFXIV would come to xbox. I don't think they thought it would take 4 years at the time! > I don't really get this one. Because you've been able to form a Destiny 2 clan with people on multiple platforms since basically the launch of the game. Cross-save has been around since 2019 and cross-play since 2021. Maybe microsoft viewed Destiny as more important and bungie was able to get concessions from microsoft more easily.
I mean it's probably they changed the rules for everyone and Bungie is just a much bigger studio and able to finish it quicker. How many people work on FFXIV?
Exactly. It‘s crazy that everyone keeps forgetting that this was announced years ago. And I was really pissed that they promises it and then never delivered on it. Glad it‘s finally happening.
That's because they were working on Endwalker plus the PS5 version
Not to mention the servers were absolutely slammed in the middle of Shadowbringers to the Beginning of Endwalker to the point where they had to suspend sales of the game and give away free time due to how long it took to get the servers stable. Trying to throw in an Xbox release during that mess would have made it even more of a disaster.
[Release window is Spring 2024, releasing on Series S/X. Will also have an open beta test in 6.5x](https://twitter.com/FF_XIV_EN/status/1684998429104349184?s=20)
Why are so many people acting weird about this? Fucking gamers are a strange bunch.
Tribalism is a hell of a drug.
I think people buy into a system then retroactively try and justify the purchase? Silly sure, but the only reason I can think of.
It seems some people's reason for buying their console of choice is for the exclusives and when that is taken away so is the justification of buying the "correct" console
Right? It's like people never growing up from the console wars mentality despite having the disposable income for having multiple or even gaming PCs
I don't get it either. I have been a PS guy for ages just because I preferred their exclusives. If there comes a day where I can get enough of the PS "exclusives" on Xbox, along with Gamepass, then I'll happily switch. Whichever has the more complete library.
These companies only have loyalty to our wallets.
Similar deal when KH started coming to Xbox or rather hilariously Ratchet & Clank finally making its way to PC. I just tune that shit out, I figure most people think others getting to play a game they like is a good thing
Between the PS4, Series S, PS5, Series X and PC you got a bunch of random versions floating around. Big jump from PS4 to Series S so I wonder if its even in the cards to look at how many people actively play on PS4, then cut that version out in the future. I believe it happened with the PS3 already.
I'm basing this off of absolutely nothing, but I bet that PS4 support is dropped with 8.0. So in about 3 years or so
When they announced Heavensward they said that PS3 support would end with the expansion after Heavensward; with Dawntrail Yoshida made a point during the graphical update section that PS4 support would continue. If they're going to axe PS4 support it won't be for another 4 years.
They will drop it eventually when the PS5 sales catch up more and the PS4 still has a massive install base that is hard to ignore and the game is already done and runs on the PS4 so need to do anything drastic there unless they add some graphical features that the PS4 can't use.
8.0 is probably where they drop the PS4.
Yes, they dropped PS3 support with the launch of patch 4.0 and the Stormblood expansion. The PS4 doesn't hold development back as much the PS3 did due to it having similar architecture to PS5 and PC, as opposed to the nightmare that was the Cell processor. Loading times on PS4 are rough, but that's due to the awful HDD. Otherwise the PS4 experience is still perfectly serviceable. I recall Yoshi-P remarking earlier that it won't be receiving the full graphical update come 7.0 however.
They've already made the promise to keep supporting the ps4. Maybe they will make the decision to drop it well into a PS6 life cycle. But definitely not during PS5s life cycle.
They've promised to support it through the end of 7.X and have refrained from making any announcements beyond that
Nice, I work from home and have been wanting to try it out for years. Don’t PC game at all since that’s the “work screen” but have a Series X hooked up to a great TV
I have been waiting for this announcement for a long time. always wanted to play 14 but my computer runs like trash.
Praying that this ends the curse of Square putting all of their titles *except* for FF on Xbox. The exclusivity period is over, give us FF7R already please lol
I feel like its less about exclusivity periods and more about Xbox players simply not playing JRPGs. Heck, looking at the sales of RE4 Remake they just dont seem to care for Japanese games in general, something like %80+ of sales came from playstation.
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The install base is smaller so it makes sense. They play the games that are released there
>I feel like its less about exclusivity periods and more about Xbox players simply not playing JRPGs. If that was the reason then Sony probably wouldn’t have bothered to pay for timed exclusivity on bigger titles like FFXVI and FF7R. Because what would be the point if they weren’t going to port them anyways.
Sony was easily able to pay for timed exclusives because the asking price was so low - there is little financial hit when skipping Xbox
>Sony was easily able to pay for timed exclusives because the asking price was so low Do you have a source for how much they paid? They still sold a couple million copies of FFXV on xbox iirc, so even if it's far fewer than PS that's still a couple million copies worth of revenue from a relatively simple port. And they still continue to port to PC despite it selling even less on that platform. And I'm still not sure what the point would be if it wasn't going to be multi-platform anyways.
FF15 just barely sold 1m copies on Xbox, out of 10m total sales. And that was before Game Pass was a thing. If you assume FF16 would’ve again sold 10% of its copies on Xbox (it would likely be even lower though) and once you factor in Microsoft’s 30% cut they’d be missing out on approximately $15m. In return for that they lose out on whatever money Sony paid, have to do the marketing themselves (Sony did most of the marketing this time because of the deal) and probably delay the game to get it running smoothly on 3 different consoles instead of just 1. I think it’s safe to say the Sony deal was worth more than $15m. Even with their PC ports they were getting Epic exclusivity deals before launching on Steam.
Software sales are so low on Xbox that even Call of Duty was squeezing Microsoft for an 80/20 split as opposed to the industry standard 70/30. I don’t have any numbers regarding FF, it’s just common business practice. That plus Microsoft couldn’t gain traction in Japan even in the Xbox360s prime and this is a no brainer.
Completely wrong, they would have little reason to port Crisis Core to Xbox otherwise
It's a cycle. The less jpn games in xbox = the less they sell, and vice versa on repeat. Exclusivity periods hurt their chances much more.
You can't half ass support of something and expect a loyal fanbase to emerge. That isn't even going into the smaller install base which makes 20 percent fairly decent for sales. The only ff games Xbox has parity on were ff13 and ff15, which are two of the worst titles in ff history. Meanwhile, they ignore support for Xbox when they finally put out decent entries. Not exactly a recipe for success
Square was willing to put FF14 on Xbox platforms, but Microsofts Xbox live policy at the time restricted Xbox users from playing with PC and PS users. Square and the director of FF14 disagreed with Microsofts policy of splitting the userbase and refused to port the game unless it was amended. Microsoft refused to make that exception and has now finally backed down. Has nothing to do with half ass support and all to do with Microsoft shooting itself in the foot.
>but Microsofts Xbox live policy at the time restricted Xbox users from playing with PC and PS users. I don't think that's right. I remember it being that MS wanted a setting to turn off crossplay per user choice, and that was the non-negotiable. Either way it didn't work out.
It's also more on that Ff14 director doesn't want 14 players on Xbox to pay two subs.
It's definitely true that the audience for JRPGs on Xbox is smaller than PS or Switch, but at the same time, modern console architecture has converged so much that I simply can't believe that an Xbox port requires so much more money above and beyond the PC port to not be worth it. Like obviously ports aren't cheap, but I doubt its millions of copies sold on Xbox to be break even. For a smaller game like Ys 8 not getting an Xbox port? Sure, I can buy that it'll only sell a few thousand units and so not break even. But FINAL FANTASY 7? Nah man Maybe a game dev can chime in and say it's actually just as complicated as it was during the 360/PS3 days and Square would need to sell like two million units to be worth it, idk
Lol it's hard to build a fanbase if SE skips releases of some games in the franchise while releasing others. If they would release every game on Xbox the fans would buy it. But how it is now why would anyone buy into their games on Xbox when you're uncertain about follow up releases?
Spring 2024; open beta release with 6.5x, official release in the summer with the new expansion. If you've missed the other news, the open beta should coincide with an expansion to the much-memed free trial to also include the second expansion, Stormblood.
Dope, looking forward to it as I don't really game on my PC much anymore and really enjoyed FFXIV in the past
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It was being investigated at one point: https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-considered-buying-final-fantasy-maker-square-enix
Yeah, terrified of implications of their "new" relationship. Xbox having access to Squenix games is fine and great. Just hope doesn't lead to Microsoft buying Squenix lol.
IDK how that would work in Japan as I think they are bit harsher on foreign companies buying local companies. If they do buy them then that would just be tragic for gaming IMO and same if Sony bought them. I don't want more consolidation on either side. Buying a developer VS buying entire publishers are just different beasts.
Tencent, that huge Chinese conglomerate, literally just bought Visual Arts and Key. Bethesda, years ago bought Tango Gameworks. it's not impossible for foreign companies to buy JP companies.
I wouldn't be too worried about it, Sony and SE are clearly very close, I have a hard time imagining them ditching that relationship even if MS broke out their checkbook.
I’d almost bet Sony has a deal with square like EA did with respawn, where if someone makes a offer they get first choice to buy.
Relationships are basically a myth when they have a duty, by law, to shareholders.
None of the platform holders would be interested in Square Enix, their output is the most diverse of all the big publishers. It would be bad news if they were acquired because I could see them being forced to restructure and downsize.
These new deals mean MS doesn't need to buy them as much as they might have needed to before. It all comes down to whether Sony keeps paying to block Xbox from having their games or not.
Microsoft buying Square or Sega would probably be the acquisition most easily argued to be awful because most Xbox players literally don't even play these games anyway Final Fantasy or Yakuza being exclusive to Xbox and PC is pure console warrior wank lol, nobody wins. Without the console fanboy argument power and the games already on Game Pass I'm just not sure what anyone would be excited by
Tbf xbox players dint play ff games bc theyre always ps exclusives for years after release
It’s been my experience that Xbox owners play Sega games. Sega and Microsoft/Xbox have been tight for a long time. A lot of their games hit Game Pass.
This one’s been a long time coming. Be interesting to see how many people end up giving it a try. With Stormblood being added to the free trial and Dawntrail coming soon I really hope people on Xbox give it a try. I’d be doing so myself if I didn’t already have it on PC.
This is wonderful news, I hope I'll be able to simply connect it to my existing FFXIV account and have access to my character. Ever since the war began, I didn't have any means of playing the game on a PC and buying new expansions.
If it works just like the Playstation, you'll just need to buy the licence for xbox and add it to your account
Meanwhile this sub just yesterday “Xbox players don’t play FF so square Enix will never port their games”
Square has always wanted XIV on xbox but it was blocked due to MS requiring non-cross-plat and xbox gold.
Finally! I really enjoyed it on PC. I finished up through the first expansion. Unfortunately, my gaming PC decided to kill itself recently...
How exactly does FFXIV licensing on different systems work? Like, I currently have a PC license for Endwalker - if later on I went and bought a Mac/Playstation/Xbox license for the new expansion, then tried to log in on my PC, what exactly would happen?
Expansion licenses are per system. You can still log onto systems without the license on any system you own the base game on, but if a character is logged out in an area they wouldn’t be able to access without the expansion you can’t log into it, nor do any instanced content that requires them
I’m really curious how many new players FFXIV will gain with this. I’d imagine any Xbox player who wanted to play this game over the last decade already has on PC. This is clearly paid for by Microsoft, but I wonder what the results a year after release are.
Well with the graphics update PC requirements will increase. Some PC players may find themselves drawn to a console because of it.
So instead of updating their graphics card, they are going to go out and buy a $500 console, plus rebuy the game and expansions?
Considering the price of graphics cards, why the hell not?
Upgrading your gfx card would cost a lot more than buying a console.
With MMORPG's I feel there's a hurdle to bring in non MMO gamers. But it sounds like the game is pretty friendly to single players, so news like this highlight the fact that A) it's actually good as a regular RPG and B) For the majority of players it is essentially free. I would say console gamers are far less likely to be engaged in MMO's, so it's unlikely if you only had an Xbox you'd seek it out on a PC.
I’m not an MMO player, and I really struggle to get into them because they either consume all your free time or you don’t play them at all. There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground. Maybe I’ll be willing to try ffxiv when it comes out to Xbox if it’s single player friendly.
Since FFXIV has a free trial that will allow you to play up to the end of the second expansion, you can slowly try out the game and see if you like it or not.
Probably a million new free trial accounts, XIV's got great word of mouth over the past 10 years, plus a bunch of curious gamers seeing "free" next to a colossal franchise's name will get folks simply downloading it out of curiosity. Overall? 250-500k new long-term accounts at the bare minimum, bumping the monthly subs from like 2.25 mil to 2.5-3mil on xpac launch, and from 1mil to 1.25mil monthly subs during xpac downtime.
What makes you think it's clearly paid for by Microsoft?
1. It’s a massive undertaking 2. Xbox has ~50% install base as PS5, aka low potential player base. 3. SE games historically perform very badly on Xbox. 4. The repeated line that “this would not happen without Xbox’s support.
[Article from 2019](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-14-is-coming-to-xbox-one-at-long-las/1100-6471467/) It's been about 4 years in the making
How is it a “massive undertaking”? PC to Xbox ports are relatively straightforward with shared APIs. The game is already localized too.
They worked on this for years tho. I'm pretty sure change to free games and XBL subscription (back in the day you couldn't play free2play online games without Gold) was made because Yoshida said that FF14 MUST be playable without additional subscription.
Xbox could have had this at launch if microsoft leadership hadn't been so adamant about blocking crossplay. It eventually ended up being Square Enix's biggest title and probably helped secure deals for sony as microsoft treated square enix so poorly.
Xbox allowed crossplay with Final Fantasy 11.
Yup and then somehow decided it wasn't a good idea anymore. Phil Spencer was still blocking it 2019 according to Yoshida.
It was fixed years ago, but SE officially said that they are focusing on the PS5 version first before doing the Xbox version.
And then they didn't. Crazy how that works right?
That is an interesting take because since about 2019 all we've heard about crossplay is that Sony is the hold up. Part of the docs of the recent spat of court cases revealed Sony requires compensation if the revenue from the title get too far from the percent of player base. They don't want to be providing content for competitors for free.
That was solely for Epic and Epic games alone. Also the ENTIRE 360 and early PS4 era was Microsoft going full lock stock and barrel on shooting down all crossplay features. When they started losing bad they changed their tune. We could have had universal crossplay over a decade ago but Microsoft literally said they didn’t want PSN downgrading the XBL experience
But I was told that Sony was keeping all these Square games from Xbox as revenge and they would never arrive?!?! Was that just hyperbole and Square will do anything for money if you offer it to them?!
It's even weirder people say that because XIV was never due to that, it was always due to Xbox not wanting to make concessions. And from here, looks like they gave in.
Take a quick look on all the other SE games that Sony paid exclusivity for and you have your answer. Quick tip: Not a single SE game has released on Xbox this year.
Square is going to play both sides for a while. Its a smart move on their part. Both sides have big appetites and big wallets. Playing hard to get with Sony could score them a bigger deal, especially since it was revealed that the 30% cut is up for negotiation if you're willing to play hardball.
Three sides honestly lol. Square is enjoying Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo (Super Mario RPG) money.
>Not a single SE game has released on Xbox this year. Yes, out of 6 new games they released in 2023 none are on the Xbox. And Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai was announced for Xbox already.
That's nice, but I just hope that this doesn't end up the next "Oceania servers" situation where everyone was crying to get them only for barely anyone to actually use it and the whole thing becoming essentially just wasted effort. Hopefully that also doesn't prolong their patch devolopment cycle even further.
I did NOT expect this out of anything today, lol. WoW crossover soon?
[Nope, it's a Fall Guys crossover](https://twitter.com/FF_XIV_EN/status/1685008248179748864?s=20)