Questions about Final Fantasy XIV (2010 video game)
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Why did Final Fantasy XIV fail at launch in 2010?
Final Fantasy XIV launched in 2010 with a Metacritic score of 49 out of 100 due to a broken interface, poor performance, slow gameplay, and an unfinished state. A postmortem revealed that the development team prioritized graphical quality over gameplay, used a middleware engine called Crystal Tools that proved unsuitable for an MMORPG, and planned to fix problems after launch rather than before. Tanaka and Komoto were removed from their roles as producer and director in December 2010.
When did Final Fantasy XIV original servers shut down?
The original Final Fantasy XIV servers were shut down on the 11th of November 2012, following a final in-game battle that all players were invited to attend. The last revised build of the game had gone live on the 1st of November 2012, before the permanent shutdown.
Who composed the music for Final Fantasy XIV 2010?
Nobuo Uematsu composed the score for the original Final Fantasy XIV, marking his first full MMORPG soundtrack. The game's theme song, "Answers", was composed by Uematsu and sung by Susan Calloway, whom Uematsu personally selected. After launch, additional music was contributed by Masayoshi Soken, Naoshi Mizuta, Tsuyoshi Sekito, and Ryo Yamazaki.
How many copies did Final Fantasy XIV sell before it shut down?
Final Fantasy XIV had sold 603,000 copies worldwide by November 2010, roughly six weeks after its September 30 launch. During its debut week in Japan, the Collector's Edition reached number 2 in the PC games charts.
What happened to Final Fantasy XIV after its failure?
Square Enix replaced the entire development leadership and rebuilt the game from the ground up. Naoki Yoshida took over as producer and director, and a rebooted version titled Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was released in 2013. By April 2021, A Realm Reborn had surpassed 22 million registered players.
Why was Final Fantasy XIV never released on Xbox 360?
Development on an Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIV was cancelled because Square Enix and Microsoft could not agree on server access. Square Enix wanted a shared server across all platforms, but Microsoft required Xbox Live players to use a separate server and would not grant the access needed to implement cross-platform play.