Random Roar: A Heartfelt Welcome to Eorzea!
I remember when Final Fantasy XIII was in development, and the announcement came that it was going to be a cross-platform release, appearing on both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Gamers flipped out, and not in a good way. I suppose it came from the series having been exclusive to the PlayStation series of consoles since 1997. Literally every main series installment got a PlayStation release in some manner or another during this span of time, except for the third game. Still, the series had just started appearing on Nintendo’s hardware again thanks to both Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, so you wouldn’t think it would be that much of a problem for it to appear on a Microsoft console as well, but apparently that was a bridge too far. It’s okay for games to appear on the third place console manufacturer of its generation, but not for games to appear on Sony’s direct rival! The horror!
…except that the main series wasn’t Sony exclusive anyway, it’d appeared on Microsoft consoles before. Final Fantasy XI had an Xbox 360 version that released several years prior to Final Fantasy XIII. It makes the backlash to the Final Fantasy XIII announcement all the more perplexing to me.
I’ve never understood why someone should feel loyal to a system and/or a company in the console video game market. During the seventh hardware generation, I owned all three major consoles and have good games for all three (and should note that all three also had some pretty terrible games, what with Too Human on the Xbox 360, the original Hyperdimension Neptunia on the PlayStation 3 and shovelware on the Wii by the cartful). If a game gets a release on more than one system, then anyone who can’t afford to pick up every system of the generation can still play that game. (Unless you’re Cassette Beasts and choose to release on everything except the system many people chose as their one system of the generation.) Still, I suppose there’s nothing that can be done about the unhinged console fanboys out there who make owning a Microsoft or Sony console their one big thing that defines their entire personality.
Much worse are the fanboys that latch onto a game that hasn’t even come out yet and spout murderous threats whenever anything delays it by a mere week or two. I remember when Final Fantasy XV was in development hell, having been announced at roughly the same time as Final Fantasy XIII, and when a firm release date was finally given, it turned out that they needed to push it back. It was being delayed by less than a month, but you wouldn’t know it from how many crying babies it turned out the fandom had. I guess gamers have gotten used to playing games with a lack of polish and so many bugs that you have to call an exterminator every time you remove the disc from your system, so their thought must’ve been, “We’ll play it now and they’ll iron out the bugs later. How dare they keep this game from us for another few weeks.” But that’s not how Square-Enix rolls, at least not when it comes to the Final Fantasy series. It has to be perfect or not at all.
And what’s wrong with waiting for a game to be perfect? I’d much rather a game work right from the start than have to wait for it to be patched later in order for it to even function. Far too many games arrive in an imperfect state, so anything that is released and requires minimal patching (or none at all) should be applauded.
I remember when Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker‘s release date was fast approaching, and Naoki Yoshida realized his team needed to iron out a few things before the game was ready. I honestly blame, at least in part, the reaction Final Fantasy XV‘s delay got for why Yoshida was in tears when he was announcing the delay. Sure, he also thought he was letting down millions of players of his game, but he might also have been afraid that they would turn on him like the fans who had been anticipating Final Fantasy XV. It was much more fortunate, then, that the community reaction was mainly that he should take as much time as he needs and that we’d be there for him no matter what.
It has always felt like the Final Fantasy XIV fan community is one of the best on the Internet. There are some bad apples like there are in every community, but the good far outweighs the bad, and I like to think that the vast majority of us are friendly and accepting of everyone who plays our game. It was, therefore, heartening to see how excited we were for Xbox users to finally be allowed to visit Eorzea and its surrounding continents.
I imagine there’ll still be some prejudice against Xbox users like there have been in the past to players on the PlayStation 3 who were blamed for the various ways in which the game might’ve been held back on a technical level (and which some people try to claim the PlayStation 4 is holding the game back now), but I’ve seen far more people being accepting of the new influx of players. It’s wonderful to go mining for old crafting materials from A Realm Reborn and see many sprouts running around, experiencing the game for the first time. Not just sprouts, whole groups of sprouts, together in a party! It’s not been uncommon to see lone sprouts making their way through the game, but right now, there are plenty of groups of new players on all servers trying out the game and hopefully seeing why millions of veteran players enjoy it. Just today, I logged into the game and had a 60 player queue in front of me, the longest queue I’ve seen in a long while. I think the last time I saw anything longer than 30 players was back when the Endwalker expansion released. The animosity towards Xbox consoles from people who wanted to play Lightning’s adventures on the PlayStation 3 seems to have vanished, at least when it comes to the community surrounding Final Fantasy XIV.
And I, for one, would like to welcome everyone who is finally able to join the game on Microsoft consoles. It’s always been weird to me, and to many players, that the game was never available on your console of choice. It was never disclosed why, but we had always assumed that Sony forced an exclusivity deal coupled with a non-disclosure agreement, kind of like how it’s assumed the same for Cassette Beasts releasing everywhere except the PlayStation consoles. It’s also not known why Sony’s okay with it now, but I speculate Final Fantasy XVI is involved somehow. What better way to secure a lengthy exclusivity deal for the newest Final Fantasy than to get Sony to agree to lift its exclusivity over the MMO?
Anyway, to all of the Xbox players joining the game, I wish to extend my warmest welcome to Eorzea. May you ever walk in the light of the crystal!
About The Author
Joseph
Panthera Editus | In the great frozen land in the north known as Canada, a little to the east of that other frozen land in the north known as Alaska, resides the gaming enthusiast whom most people know as Joseph. When he’s not gaming or writing about gaming, he likes to enjoy life’s little ironies. Twitter
