Remember that you could play FFXI cross play with X360/ps2 =p. Remember SE boosting about it being in the top ten most active games on Xblive.

I'd say WoW actually backs the argument up. It's one of the most successful video games ever created, it's over a decade old, and yet it's still using effectively the same engine. It's seen some nice improvements, but they're been gradual and highly linear.  In 13~ years they've upgraded by about half a console generation.

FF14's technical base isn't just a matter of its engine though, i'd argue it's in largest part because of design philosophy. The 1.0 shitshow lead to a huge shift in technical design targets for FF14, resulting in its current 'make it look nice, then stop and move on to more content' way of doing things. If they really wanted to make significant technical changes, they already can. That they think a Switch version is even worth discussing should highlight how much breathing room they have left on the PS4. But they don't, because their technical base has been set and the work required to dramatically shift it would go against their design philosophy of the last 4~ years. They will make more improvements over time, but i expect only when it's either easy (such as POM on the DX11 version), or when they think it's necessary (maybe once the PS5/XBwhatever is out and established).

The PS4 version will inevitably be dropped, but i don't think it'll be down to inherent technical limitations. I think it'll be a repeat of the current DX9 situation.

Yes. So does street fighter 5.

I'm saying that it's more than just that. The design philosophy has been handcuffed by the PS3 specs, resulting in smaller zones, less complex battles, and simple instances. Stormblood is already proof that they're expanding the scope of the game and enhancing the design off of that.

People...

The game is not on the xbox one 'cause Ms would obligate people to pay for xbox live gold...

FF14 runs in its own server on ps4, it doesn't go through psn, that's why we don't need to pay for ps plus to play it. Actually, we pay a monthly fee...

So, it doesn't have anything to do with sony, it has to do with MS not accepting that the players wouldn't need to pay for xbox live gold

Of course it has been (primarily because of RAM), but 4.0 has also shown that their 'content over tech' (and subsequent sticking to their general technical base) continues even when they have room to do effectively anything they reasonably want. They just cut an entire generation off their mandatory optimization minimum, and they've only capitalised on a fraction of it (in-game tech wise). As i said, that they think a Switch version is even worth discussing should highlight how much breathing room they have left. SE know their game a lot better than we do, and they clearly think the Switch's capabilities are within the range of their planned improvements for the next few years.

Their biggest point of focus for improvement right now appears to be scale, and that's predominantly a server issue now. They're why we can't even have a basic glamour list; the way they handle inventory exchanges between zones makes it a daunting task (at present you effectively have a separate inventory for every area, and the server fills it with whatever it knows you had in the last one). As the servers continue to be improved, we should see the game's scale increase without much effect on minimum specs. I think we'll see them abandon the DX9 version relatively soon (and in line with that a jump from 3GB of RAM to 4GB), but that's about it for a while. A Switch version would probably continue to be fine until that minimum on PC reaches 6 to 8GB. 

Depends on the games even ESo needs Gold/Plus but if that was the issue I expect Yoshida would say it and would suck for Switch owners. You can't have FFXIV because Ms don't want to give up GOLD XD.

I thought MS changed their policy on F2P MMOs a while back so they do not require gold anymore (just googled it and can't find an answer to this). If they still charge Xbox Live Gold to play F2P mmos then that is a big 'for shame'.

If not, they whatever policy they have there would apply to this game. MMO Tera is coming to both platforms soon, it's a F2P game and originally I thought it was to boost numbers but if the player base is console locked then the player numbers would be tiny even compared to the PC version.

dos elder scrolls online have crossplay? 

Edit: Just saw that ESO requires xbox live gold and ps plus and it's not crossplataform

Square Enix wouldn't like the idea of MS charging for xbox live gold for ff14

Quick research indicates no. Fair to assume any game available on more than 1 console and PC doesn't. Exception being Rocket League but that first came out on PC and PS4 only which is why it has cross play.