Final Fantasy 14 Xbox launch date set for later this month – Claim Starter Edition on Xbox Game Pass

thesixthaxis.com:

The full release of Final Fantasy XIV on Xbox Series X|S is coming later this month on 21st March, with a Starter Edition of the game being bundled in as an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate perk until 19th April.

The long-awaited Xbox release of Final Fantasy 14 comes after an open beta for Xbox players kicked off in February – which will run through to the full release – accomplishing a years-long ambition of Xbox leadership. Phil Spencer has consistently pushed to get more of Square Enix’s games onto Xbox over the years, and while Final Fantasy 15 was a full cross-platform release last generation and Microsoft were able to bring a lot of these historical games to Xbox and to Xbox Game Pass through 2019 and 2020,, Square Enix has leant more and more heavily toward PlayStation with FF7 Remake and Rebirth have remained PlayStation exclusives, and Final Fantasy 16 was only on PS5 as well.

Of course, Square Enix hasn’t really needed Xbox for Final Fantasy 14 to be a continuing success story for the company. While it had a notoriously poor initial release, it’s gone from strength to strength ever since its 2014 relaunch on PlayStation and PC with regular biennial major expansions and big updates that almost invariably see Square Enix butting up against the limits of their server capacity. in October 2021, just ahead of the release of Endwalker, it had over 24 million registered players and was Final Fantasy’s most profitable entry, no doubt thanks to the monthly subscriptions. Adding Xbox players into the mix will only serve to bolster those figures.

Naturally the Xbox release of Final Fantasy 14 includes all of the game’s expansions and content to date, and newcomers will have a few months to delve into all of the existing things to do before the next big expansion this summer – the first since 2021. Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail has been described by Square Enix as being “the very best summer vacation”.