Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P, who produced Final Fantasy XIV as well as Final Fantasy XVI) also emphasized how serious Square Enix is about its previously announced multiplatform strategy.
Yoshi-P spoke to Eurogamer at Gamescom about how the Japanese publisher doesn’t want to focus on just one platform. So Xbox is explicitly important to them: “Players have been waiting a long time for Final Fantasy XIV to come to Xbox, but I’m happy to say that we’ve seen a really strong response on Xbox. We’ve seen communities start to form and now they’re growing. 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 for the Final Fantasy franchise. I think this is where we would have more communication and work on building the community for the future. And this is important, not for Final Fantasy XIV, but I would say for Square Enix. With the release of Final Fantasy XIV on Xbox, Phil Spencer spent a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of hard work to make it happen. So we want to make the most of that and deepen our relationship with Xbox gamers in the future.
I want you to take this as a general argument, but when it comes to the Xbox platform and the fact that it’s been difficult for Japanese titles to be released on the platform, it’s related to the fact that in the Japanese market, the number of Xbox users is extremely low. And since we are Japanese developers, we naturally have a desire for many people in our country to play our games. I think this is true for developers in any country, no matter what country they come from, they want a lot of people from their own country to play their games. So it’s a really difficult point from a business standpoint. I think that’s one way to look at the situation in general.
But at Square Enix, we have changed our policy. We are now moving towards a 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 a starting point, we want to release more Square Enix games on Xbox, and there will be more of our titles released on Xbox. So I hope players can look forward to future things to come on the platform,” said Yoshi-P.
Final Fantasy XVI is coming to PC soon, and it’s a safe bet that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which is also currently exclusive to PlayStation 5, will also make its way to PC…
