Xbox server policies make for “weak” communities, says Final Fantasy 14 developer

[LordMatrix]

eFKac said:

Nsanity said:

VG247

Final Fantasy 14 probably won’t be making the jump to Xbox One because of the platform’s closed community policies, according to director Naoki Yoshida.

 

“I personally don’t like saying no to anything, and I’d like to keep that option open,” Yoshida toldPolygon of the possibility of an Xbox One release now that the MMORPG has been confirmed for PlayStation 4 as well as PC

“We want this game on as many systems as possible and get the game into the hands of as many players as possible, so we won’t say that we won’t do it.

“But if we published to Xbox One right now, it would essentially be an Xbox only community.”

Yoshida pointed out, quite reasonably, that the Xbox community is tiny in Japan, and given that Japan is the franchise’s strongest territory, there’re just not enough players to support the game – especially as Microsoft’s Xbox platform policies do not allow cross-play with other consoles.

“Maybe you only have a few thousand people who maybe really love Final Fantasy and are playing the Xbox version,” he said.

“But because it’s a closed community, you only have this tiny community that is not allowed to play with the rest of the world, and you worry how you’re going to retain that community. An MMO is built on its community, and if it’s weak, then what is the point?”

That's rather weird when the servers are on the 3rd parties side. Why do they hold such a policy?

Unlike Sony all of the online games on Xbox 360/Xbox One are tied to Microsoft`s LIVE servers. This is part of the reason you must pay to play multiplayer since 2002 on Xbox LIVE. It is also the reason why, unlike Playstation Network; all games on Xbox 360 can still be played online. (cept for EA...all EA games on Xbox connect to EA servers for online play. EA servers are piss poor.) Only reason Final Fantasy 11 was able to bypass this is because Microsoft allowed it due to wanting to announce and show that the big JRPG developer once Sony heavy was now working on Xbox as well.