Eorzea’s world looks to be completely open. Ranging between the PC and Mac lovers, to your PS3 and PS4 players. However, it looks like it’s missing another key platform, the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
Why Not The Xbox Consoles?
Due to Xbox Live’s policies, their services do not allow the support of cross-platform play. Therein nullifying the ability to play your games with your friends who have purchased the game on a different platform. In a recent interview with Naoki Yoshida, on RPGsite, he states:
“The main reason from our side is that I don’t want the community to be divided; to be split into two or more. For example, one player might be on the PC version, another might be on the PS4 version, and I’m playing the Xbox version – but we’re not able to join the same game servers. That is just… I just don’t like the idea. I disagree with it…”
With the thoughts of a divided user base on the table, an MMO game that is split up isn’t really an MMO. Instead of the eight characters that you would see in the picture below (normal), you would probably end up being in a party that is half of that!
After a few other questions, Naoki Yoshia proceeded with a follow-up statement.
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“To be frankly honest with you, there are now so many mobile devices, smart phones, everything — why would you ever just stick to one platform from the hardware aspect? Just — make it open to everyone? That’s my opinion.”
“I would love for as many players as possible to enjoy the game worldwide, so from a business point of view it could make sense to have it on the Xbox platforms. But as I mentioned earlier, that would bring about the tragedy that somebody might have to give up their existing character. Then players might get frustrated, and then they ask us – ‘Square Enix, can’t you do something?’ and then… yeah. Unless that happens, we can’t really do anything.“
What are your thoughts, do you support it should come to the Xbox consoles for the cross platform capabilities, or do you agree to have your own servers? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!