Naoki Yoshida, the current producer and director for Final Fantasy 14, has admitted to numerous mistakes the Square Enix team made at the launch for the game in an appearance on a Japanese TV show. Otherwise known as “Yoshi-P,” the Final Fantasy 14 producer explains how the extent of these mistakes forced the developer to completely redo the game, which is now one of the most successful MMOs for the Final Fantasy franchise and for Square Enix in general.
What mistakes were made during Final Fantasy 14’s launch?
On the April 2nd episode of the classroom variety show, which regularly features prominent people who explain mistakes they made and how to learn from them, Yoshida shares the struggles he and his team had when Final Fantasy 14 first released. According to translations by Siliconera, he explains that the developer faced criticism from both fans and critics.
Not only was there very little to do in the game when it launched, but the simple act of opening a door would take far too long. While the Final Fantasy 14 producer wanted every corner of the game world to look beautiful, dedicating a lot of hardware resources to rendering objects like flower pots, it meant that only 30 players could be visible at any given team. In hindsight, the trade-off was not worth it.
It might take some time to remember that Final Fantasy 14 didn’t always have the success it enjoys now. Yoshida was made the director for The Realm Reborn with the sole mission of fixing what was a huge blunder for Square Enix at the time.
Today it is already the profitable Final Fantasy game in history and in December sales for the game had to be suspended temporarily suspended because there weren’t enough servers to handle the influx of new players. In fact, Yoshida himself tearfully apologized when he had to delay Endwalker by two weeks.
In other news, Sony is looking to bring PS3 emulation to the PS5, and Sony is asking retailers to break box seals for the PS5 to deter scalpers.
