Final Fantasy XIV could take at least another five years, director says

Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida recently spoke about the future of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game with The Washington Post, saying that at the current rate of growth, users can expect the online world to continue to expand with new content for at least another five years, if not indefinitely.

“Even now, [Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda] encourages us to aim for more players and 30 million adventurers, and he still has plans for the future for us, ”said Yoshida The Washington Post via translator. “Fortunately, we don’t see any stops in our momentum. At one point we thought we might hit a plateau, but luckily our player base just keeps expanding and growing. “

While developing games is never easy, Final Fantasy XIV extensions and patches have continued to produce a decent clip under the guidance of Yoshida, thanks to the way his team has streamlined the process of creating new content. Yoshida said that when planning expansions, they expect about 70% of the work to be done already because of previous development, leaving just enough room to iterate on those standardized resources.

The writing, Yoshida added, is always done much further in advance. The story for Final Fantasy XIVcoming End runner the expansion, which will commence this fall, was fully completed in October 2019.

Final Fantasy XIV got off to a rocky start when it first launched in 2010, but Square Enix’s decision to divest Yoshida (then best known as a talented Dragon Quest X planner) in a leadership role led to the release of An empire reborn, a reboot of the original game that served as the basis for all subsequent expansions.

It is largely believed that Yoshida’s work of flipping the MMO landed him a role in producing the next single-player episode of the series, Final Fantasy XVIBut for now, he’s keeping quiet about what they have in store to avoid the Final Fantasy fan base.

“We don’t want to say something that’s half-baked and sparks speculation [Final Fantasy XVI], ‘Said Yoshida. ‘With every Final Fantasy fan, whichever one Final Fantasy title is your jam, the point where you get aroused will be different. ”