Those Square-Enix people say the craziest things. In a recent Fanfest report, Square Enix vice president and producer of Final Fantasy XI Hiromichi Tanaka and other members of the Square Enix development team had some interesting input about the impact of World of Warcraft on Final Fantasy XI’s user base.
When asked about the topic, the team stated:
“Actually, we haven’t been affected that much by WoW. When FFXI hit its peak users was about the time that WoW was released, and when it was released we didn’t see a big reduction in the players. It’s pretty much been about the same.”
They added: “We feel that with a lot of MMORPGs on the market, players have the choice of the one they want to go to and they’ll try them out and then they’ll stick with one — and we see that people who chose FFXI have stuck with it.”
While these timelines are factually true, saying that your MMO wasn’t affected by WoW is like saying it didn’t hurt that much to get your cheeks scraped off with a cheese grater. Add in that legions of players quit playing Final Fantasy XI with the complaint that it was boring, and you have some definite issues there. Ah well, Japan will play it no matter what.
Square is unphased though, plugging away on a new MMO project. The big question: Will it be Final Fantasy or something new altogether? Per the horse’s mouth:
As you might already know, members from the current FFXI team are working on a next generation MMO, but it still hasn’t been decided whether that’s going to be a game in the FF series, a continuation, or a totally new game. We are working on it, but it hasn’t been decided that far yet.
There you have it, kids. Now go slay some murlocs or something.
[Via Gamasutra, Thanks Jonathan!]
