‘Final Fantasy XVI’ producer and director Naoki Yoshida wants Square Enix to “further deepen the relationship with Xbox gamers”.
Final Fantasy XVI producer and director Naoki Yoshida wants Square Enix to 'further deepen the relationship with Xbox gamers'
After releasing on the PlayStation 3 in 2013 before becoming available on the PS4 and the PS5, the fantasy RPG finally launched on Microsoft’s consoles last month in tandem with the new ‘Dawntrail’ expansion, and the game’s lead had now stressed developer studio Square Enix wants to “strengthen the community on Xbox”.
Speaking to Euro Gamer, he said: “Players have been waiting a long time for the Xbox release, 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. 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.”
Yoshida explained that Xbox’s low market share in Japan and the difficulties of releasing Japanese titles on the platform had put off lots of internal developers from launching their games on Microsoft’s consoles, though emphasised that Square Enix was now going to enforce a policy of releasing their future projects “on a multi-plaftorm basis”.
He said: “Now we are moving towards the policy of releasing our games on a multi-platform 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.”