Despite one of the worst launch receptions we’ve ever seen for an MMO, a year being free to play and a ground-up re-engineering has made way for Square Enix’s announcement that plans to port Final Fantasy XIV over to the PS3 are still on track. The latest batch of fixes and patches, a “Final Fantasy XIV Online Version 2.0”, is expected to be released sometime in Q4 2012. Square will offer another free trial for the game on PC (which will restart on monthly subscriptions next month) and a closed beta on the PS3 during this “reboot phase”.
“Among our new plans is the fundamental reworking of in-game maps,” FF14 producer/director Naoki Yoshida said. “As part of this process, there will be a period required for switching over to a new client and new servers, after which there will be a large transfer of data when service is brought back online.
Yoshida continued, “After the new client is completed, new software for the PC version will be distributed online, and can be acquired free of charge. Character data and progress for players already playing the PC version will also be preserved, allowing those players to continue using their in-game avatars…Another announcement will be made in the future as the day on which the new Final Fantasy 14 software will become available for download draws near, and the PlayStation 3 system version officially released.”
There is no official release date for Final Fantasy XIV on PS3, with the earliest estimates placing it sometime after January 2013.
(via Eurogamer)
The amount of content they are adding and tweaking is impressive. The four PDFs SE put up on the FFXIV site is impressive. 2.0 won’t be released until October of next year, though they are adding a lot of other things in three huge patches over the next year.