In a recent interview with Official PlayStation Magazine (via GamesRadar), Final Fantasy XIV Game Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida discussed what it took to bring the game over to PS5, and much more.
The interview touched on Endwalker, the latest expansion announced for FFXIV, and how this is meant to finish the story arc which began with A Realm Reborn. Yoshida spoke about what this actually means and why this was the time to conclude the story,
“To put it simply, if we take an example of a TV drama, if we're just dragging out the story and people don't want to watch it, then, of course, that's not going to do us any good. Maybe for example, we get up to the fourth season. But then, okay, we decide to continue the fun until the sixth season or the eighth season maybe, and people would be really sick of it, you know? They really wouldn't be able to stand it anymore.”
The conversation also touched upon the PS5 beta and what it means to be working with shiny new console hardware. Yoshida explained that the memory size increase and faster loading speeds really helped the porting process.
Crucially, for Yoshida, Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy games in general are at home on consoles. This means it was important that the console version wasn’t “inferior” to the PC version. Yoshida expands on this,
“I wanted to make MMOs more accessible to general gamers. So, in a way, I wanted to make the genre itself more popular. And as a means to that end, obviously providing the title on the consoles was also part of that. People would usually think "oh, if I want to play an MMO I have to play it on PC." I wanted to change that kind of outlook about it. So actually delivering this on console as well, it played a part in changing the perception of MMOs. But that was actually more a personal kind of goal of mine.”
