Naoki Yoshida has raised hopes with Nintendo fans that they may soon be playing his singular achievement for Square Enix.
When Final Fantasy XIV originally released in 2010 for Windows, its high initial sales soon gave way to a tidal wave of criticisms for the poor shape it launched in. Its extended and expensive development would make it a financial disaster for Square Enix, leading to reshuffling behind the scenes and a shockingly sullen reputation for the legendary game developer.
Naoki Yoshida had already been working for Square Enix for years. However, when he was set to the task of fixing Final Fantasy XIV, it was a thankless, seemingly impossible endeavor. Somehow, Yoshida made the right choices that his predecessors did not, and his demonstrated patience, commitment, and leadership would make the 2013 release, completely built from the ground up, the success that the 2010 game was not. It would also start the launch of Square Enix’s most successful live service title to date, now having gone on for over a decade on three PlayStation console generations.
As we reported, Yoshida revealed that Final Fantasy XIV ‘s recent launch on Xbox would be the “starting point” to bring more Square Enix titles to Microsoft‘s player base. But Yoshida did not forget about another player base that has yet to experience his greatest success story in the industry.
GameReactor got Yoshida to go on record about bringing Final Fantasy XIV to Nintendo’s platforms. This is what Yoshida said:
“I’m sure that all of the media and our players probably suspecting they really want to have our game release on Nintendo’s consoles, but the concept that we have for Final Fantasy XIV is to release our game on as many devices as possible.
So looking towards achieving that goal. We are working towards, making progress and we are having discussions. So I hope that everyone can look forward to news in the time to come.”
As GameReactor pointed out, Yoshida may not have mentioned Nintendo’s next console, but it was clear that he was alluding to bringing Final Fantasy XIV there. We don’t know the full technical details of that console. But if it truly can run Final Fantasy XIV, and especially in portable mode, that hints at some incredible technical capabilities that we have not seen in a Nintendo platform of any kind before.
A current gen version of Final Fantasy XIV on the latest console, will likely also be a version of the game that is up to date to what PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows players have. Square Enix must have pulled off some magic to get the game running on the same Data Servers for all these platforms. So maybe part of Yoshida’s reticence in talking about this is the technical challenges they are probably still working through. But if the Switch 2, or whatever it is called, is officially revealed soon, Square Enix may make their own announcement shortly thereafter.
