To say things in the Final Fantasy XIV camp could be going a little bit better is like saying Final Fantasy VII villain Sephiroth has only a passing interest in plunging swords through people’s chests. The PC version, which launched to less than favourable reviews, has since had its trial period extended in the hope of enticing players to ultimately sign up. As for the already delayed PS3 version, there’s more bad news, as the game’s now void release date of “March 2011” has been once again pushed further into a unspecific time period.
In true Japanese tradition, Square Enix’s Hiromichi Tanaka has chosen the sword and stepped down as producer of the troubled title. A statement from President Yoichi Wada apologises to the series’ fans who expected more from the title:
“While more than two months have passed since the official launch of Final Fantasy XIV service, we deeply regret that the game has yet to achieve the level of enjoyability that Final Fantasy fans have come to expect from the franchise, and for this we offer our sincerest of apologies.
“After thorough deliberation on how to meet those expectations, it was decided that the most viable step was to approach improvements under new leadership and with a restructured team.
“To realise this vision, and in doing so, provide our customers with a better game experience, we have assembled our company’s top talent and resources. Taking over the role of producer and director is Naoki Yoshida, a passionate individual for whom customer satisfaction has always taken top priority.
Regarding the PlayStation 3, it is not our wish to release a simple conversion of the Windows version in its current state, but rather an update that includes all the improvements we have planned. For that reason, we have made the difficult decision to delay the release of the PlayStation 3 version beyond the originally announced date of March 2011.”
Tanaka-san isn’t shying away from his responsibility, however, stating:
“First of all, I would like to apologise for our inability to fully satisfy our users with the initial release of Final Fantasy XIV. I take full responsibility for the game’s current situation, and have therefore made the decision to step down from my role as producer.
Though no longer producer, I will be continuing to support the development team in other capacities, and personally hope that you will continue your adventures in the realm of Eorzea.”
The game will be produced by Naoki Yoshida going forward. Yoshida-san was the Director of Cross-Edge and worked as an Assistant Director on Record of Agarest War.
Source: Press release
kivi95
I think this is good thing for squere enix as there are so many games coming out in Q1.
MadBoJangles
Interesting.
Despite the crappy pc reviews, I am still looking forward to trying this. Hope they don’t push it back too far…
rainydays458
I’m still lookig foward to this, I the ff series, (well except XIII,XII and X-2) so I will keep hope.
DrNate86
I think that announcement should be commended, it shows they are upset by the poor reviews and really want to improve the game. I would rather it was delayed and we got a better game than the current one, rather than push out a game that had already got bad reviews on another platform. Very sensible really and very apologetic, I forgive them!
Roynaldo
Looks like its pretty much failed then. Much like a football team at the bottom of the league gets new management in a desperate attempt to rectify the problem when its core parts are still exactly the same and cannot be changed quite so easily.
The recent news on this has put me right off. FF vs XIII it is then.
ElGuason
i’d say that the game was a good idea and maybe the team wasn’t good enough or maybe the ideas weren’t good enough but either way its good they’re reaching out to the community and inform us what they plan to do hopefully they can reach something good
warp10ck
Well I was in the beta and I am not surprised at all that the producer stepped down.
It is boring there is really no other word to describe this game.
Yes it looks good but that’s really it.
And I think they are understanding now what a disaster this game is.