Xbox boss still wants Final Fantasy 14 on his platform

metro.co.uk:

Despite a three year silence, Phil Spencer swears he’s still working to get Final Fantasy 14 ported to Xbox consoles.

In 2019, Xbox’s Phil Spencer assured fans that, someday, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 14 would be brought over to the Xbox platform.

While director Naoki Yoshida said that conversations between Square Enix and Microsoft were going well last October, there has yet to be any real updates on an Xbox release.

During Tokyo Game Show, Spencer himself was asked about the situation and claimed that both companies are committed to the idea.

Unfortunately though, he didn’t given any hint as to when we could see an Xbox port, nor did he talk about what stage the discussions are at.

Considering all parties involved appear interested in getting Final Fantasy 14 onto Xbox, it’s ultimately a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if.’

‘Of course, we haven’t given up yet. This is Microsoft and Square Enix’s commitment to the game fans of both companies, and we will continue to coordinate in the future,’ Spencer told Game Watch (via Google Translate).

Given Square Enix’s close working relationship with Sony (to the point where there are rumours of the latter outright acquiring the former), it’d be easy to assume that they was the key roadblock in bringing Final Fantasy 14 to Xbox.

However, in a 2021 interview with VG247, Yoshida stressed that the reason why it’s taking so long is simply the amount of work it involves and there being not enough time to do it.

At the time, the team was very busy with not just the game’s PlayStation 5 port, but also the Endwalker expansion, which launched that December and served as the grand finale to the then current storyline.

In a 2019 interview with Wccftech, Yoshida explained that issues with cross-play were