Final Fantasy XIV team restructuring, PS3 version delayed

by JC Fletcher on Dec 10th 2010 10:35AM

We've got bad news and we've got worse news. First, the bad news: The PS3 version of Final Fantasy XIV, originally due March of next year, has been delayed indefinitely.

The worse news is that it's been delayed because the PC game is such a disaster. In an announcement released to the FFXIV community, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada apologized for the fact that the game isn't very enjoyable ... and then said that the FFXIV team is restructuring, with new leadership stepping in. Producer Hiromichi Tanaka is out, with Naoki Yoshida taking over as producer/director, and many other positions are also being restaffed. The new team is now working on "a concrete plan outlining Final Fantasy XIV's new direction." Until that new plan is implemented, the game's free trial period will continue.

And so, with the PC version currently a directionless mess, Square Enix wisely decided not to base the PS3 version on that, but instead on whatever the post-restructuring game will be. There's good news, then: Square Enix stopped making what would have been a terrible PS3 game.

Source: Lodestone

Tags: delays, final-fantasy-14, final-fantasy-xiv, mmo, pc, playstation, ps3, restructuring, square-enix, yoichi-wada

Reader Comments (77)

At least they're making a smart descision. I think we should all be thankful for that, regardless of how annoying delays are.

@FuriousMailman FYI: Naoki Yoshida was producer for Agarest War and X-Edge so... I'm not sure you could call this a smart decision.

@FuriousMailman

I see this as nothing but positive as well. At least they aren't charging people for the mess that it currently is. At the same time, one wonders how many "sweeping changes" they can make in order to have a end product more people want to play. Right now, it is such a mess, I am really wondering if it can be salvaged into a product that more than a small niche audience will enjoy.

@FuriousMailman: The "smart move" would have been to design the game so it didn't suck to begin with. What we have now is a company that's trying to figure out how to salvage a massive investment that's going down the tubes - aka, damage control. Speaking as a software engineer AND an MBA, their chances of doing this are slim at best.

@erwos

Another "smart move" is making an effort to improve what is broken. Which is what I was saying in the first place.

@FuriousMailman

Smart move? Hardly. They pulled Matsui, the new FF11 director that helped turn the stale world around somewhat with the Abyssea expansions, into the fray as well -- that game is now left to rot with producers known for awful game modules that people either never play (chocobo racing, etc) or stuff that people unwillingly put up with (Magian trials, etc). It's going to take tremendous effort to turn 14 around, and even then there's a good chance the ship's sunk too much to be saved. In the meantime 11, still Square-Enix's chief money-maker, will likely be left to rot.

The best decision would have been to cut Wada and Sage Sundi. No idea why Komoto was spared, either. He should have been off'ed when Promathia cut down server population by a good third.

@FuriousMailman: Only if it's fixable. Which it's probably not. Throwing good money after bad is actually pretty stupid.

@erwos
Slim at best ?
*coughFFVIIHDremakecough*

Man, I knew this day would come

Well, actually, I figured the game would just wallow in badness forever and I would smugly gloat about it

I was in the alpha/beta tests, but nobody gave a crap about any of my feedback. It was just a bunch of fanboys ragging on people and worshipping the few community managers who didn't bother to talk to anyone on the forums

News flash, Squeenix: You have no MMO market share outside of Japan because your games only appeal to your hikikomori fanboys

Oh Final Fantasy.. how I miss your single digit days.

@Shockwave

Excuse me? 10 was amazing...

@Shockwave

XII was pretty sweet too...with the exception of Vaan, that game was actually pretty neat ^_^.

@ShadowXIII Come now Vaan grew on you too admit it.

Penelo was awesome. >.>

I'm gonna slip in here and add some more praise for XII

Damn that game was good...

also, inb4 mandatory XII hate brigade

@Jack Kevorkian With the exceptions of the times I needed him to run on his auto-steal gambit I constructed.....he was a near permanent addition to the reserve character list.

I didn't mind Penelo, but both me and my wife wondered how she sat down....where did her butt go?

Fran won that game with me most certainly, built her as a Dark Knight that went berserk + HP buff/regen at 25% health.

..damn, I might just play through that again with all this talking about it ^_^

@Shockwave,
XII was great... could have used a more character focused story instead of a political one. X however, sucked. I cannot think of a worse Final Fantasy protagnist than Tidus.

@NinjaJesus X sucked! I know I'm in the minority, but that game was awful! And I played it all the way through, so don't accuse me of trolling.

All post Square-Enix merger Final Fantasies sucked. The last good one was IX (and in my opinion, the best one).

@Shockwave

Do do I. This is why The Last Story has got me so excited.

OMG! Finally! They kicked Hiromichi Tanaka off! Did you know in an interview they asked if he played any other MMOs and he said doesn't play those games?!

How are you a producer for one of the biggest MMORPG out there and NEVER laid your hands on another? Is like asking a blind guy to explain a silent movie!

@sohcahtoa

"How are you a producer for one of the biggest MMORPG out there and NEVER laid your hands on another? Is like asking a blind guy to explain a silent movie!"

That analogy is a thing of beauty...

@sohcahtoa
I didn't know that. Though, I have a lot of respect for Tanaka. FF3 for the DS was amazing. This is good for FFXIV but kind of sucks that it even has to happen. FFXI was such a blast to play, you'd think they'd get it even better the second time around. At least they are being decent to the consumer here. Some MMOs suck and they just keep going charging people.

That's pretty cool of them, imo.

@pigon toucher

Well the silver lining may be that now I have a reason to try out DCUO

"Square Enix stopped making what would have been a terrible PS3 game'

Maybe, just maybe they are learning...

... I won't hold out too much hope though. All I know, after FF13, I'll no longer be pre-ordering.

@Rocketboy

Same for me.

On another note, Yoichi Wada needs to get fired.

Free trial free to download, or do I gotta pay?

@Faenix

You gotta pay when they fix the game.

@Faenix

I think you still have to pay but once you do , there are no monthly fees until they finish some of these changes they are eluding to. If you like MMO's you might enjoy it, but I would have a hard time recommending it to anyone in its current state.

@Famous Mortimer

I wasnt about to BUY it, was hoping I could TRY it before I do :P

...which will be never, so the game will be free-to-play indefinitely.

Bad news?? More like music to my ears, that thing they call an mmorpg is a mess.

What a surprise. Been waiting for this for months. Now it'll be years.

Square Enix swallowed their pride. This will never happen again, enjoy the moment.

@MoFroGT I think they were counting on this revenue stram and are very nervous about this particular game. As a former XI maniac they made so many insane missteps it's a wonder some of the ideas were green lit at all.

@Jack Kevorkian I played FFXI too, which is why I'm so amazed to see they actually admitted they were wrong. It always felt like it took an act of God to get them to see that they needed to fix things that sucked.

@MoFroGT Word. I knew they were in trouble when I read XI was still getting major updates. Normally they kill the old so people are forced into the new game.

Seems like a classic case of Everquest transition to EQ2. Not good.

Jeez, they just sound like a huge clusterf%#% lately.

...at least maybe NOW they will start listening to their fans....

...maybe.

Just cancel the whole damn thing and make us a FFVII remake instead. I can guarantee it will make more money.

@Pure Black World Tendency Thank god SE doesn't listen to Cloud fanboys right?

@Pure Black World Tendency

+1

Ah, what the heck,

+ ~

@Jack Kevorkian Cloud fanboy? I just said a remake will make more money than this failed MMO.

@Pure Black World Tendency

To be fair, from what I've heard of the game, even a digital HD remake of ball in a cup, complete with ball/string/cup "peripheral", selling for $60, would make more money than this game.

@Pure Black World Tendency

You won the internet for the day and I salute you for this comment.

Notable mentions:
VI, Chrono Trigger, an *actual* KHearts sequel, and next-gen Front Mission that is not attempting to cater to FPS junkies.

@Pure Black World Tendency
Seriously. Do you really want Square attempting to remake VII? As far as I'm concerned, they no longer have the capacity to keep the FF series alive.

Idunno, I'm kinda glad to hear it. This'll hopefully teach them, and other companies, not to outsource anything to China just to cut costs.

I also hope it'll teach people not to make a perfectly good franchise into an MMO, and then cut down the remaining singleplayer installment of it into a ridiculous minigame-version of itself.

But ehh. That's never gonna happen.

@bm111
huh?
what has china to do with bad game design?

You might wanna read up on the game.

Y'know, not being enthralled by WoW, I don't really have that much of a problem with FF14 as it stands. It has its flaws but in my experience they're hardly damning, and in truth I've played worse-launched MMOs (Tabula Rasa was ambitious but not ready for prime time-- THAT was a game I'd have loved to see live long enough to improve; I couldn't stand City of Heroes until around Issue 5, but it did get VERY good; and let's just not talk about Dungeon Runners).

Then again, maybe it's just because I don't play it nearly as much as I'd like to (combination of a minimal amount of free time of late and a need for another couple gigs of RAM in order for it to not chug along).

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Final Fantasy 14

Final Fantasy XIV team restructuring, PS3 version delayed

Reader Comments (77)

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:38AM FuriousMailman said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:42AM Hector85 said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:45AM Famous Mortimer said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:03AM erwos said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:16AM FuriousMailman said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:49AM Muu said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 1:15PM erwos said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 8:55PM Xsingular said

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Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:59AM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:08AM FuriousMailman said

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Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:39AM ShadowXIII said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:47AM vmenge said

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Posted: Dec 10th 2010 5:30PM Spookimitsu said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:41AM Rocketboy said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:55AM Ballistic H said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:42AM Faenix said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:46AM shattercross said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:47AM Famous Mortimer said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:05AM Faenix said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 1:08PM Elranzer said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:46AM puerrican85 said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:47AM FakeKevinButler said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:48AM MoFroGT said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:54AM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:58AM MoFroGT said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:05AM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:49AM ShadowXIII said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:54AM Pure Black World Tendency said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:56AM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 10:57AM Ballistic H said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:23AM Pure Black World Tendency said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:39AM sonicspike41 said

Posted: Dec 10th 2010 11:45AM ShadowXIII said

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