When Final Fantasy XIV, the sequel to Final Fantasy XI, was announced at E3 09 there seemed to be a little ‘friendly’ competition between the development teams of XIV and XIII about whose title would be superior. Surprise! Looks like Final Fantasy XIII won.
Square-Enix announced that the Producer of XIV, Hiromichi Tanaka, has stepped down as problems have continued to plague the title since it’s release earlier this year. In addition to keeping the game free to play, the Playstation 3 version of the game, which was supposed to ship in March of next year, has been delayed indefinitely.
Square-Enix President Youich Wada had a few words explaining the decision to restructure and esentially fire Tanaka from the project -
“While more than two months have passed since the official launch of Final Fantasy XIV service, we deeply regret that the game has yet to achieve the level of enjoyability that Final Fantasy fans have come to expect from the franchise, and for this we offer our sincerest of apologies..
After thorough deliberation on how to meet those expectations, it was decided that the most viable step was to approach improvements under new leadership and with a restructured team.
To realise this vision, and in doing so, provide our customers with a better game experience, we have assembled our company’s top talent and resources. Taking over the role of producer and director is Naoki Yoshida, a passionate individual for whom customer satisfaction has always taken top priority.”
While the restructuring may stabilize the product and ultimately provide a compelling experience, this delay might prove detrimental to the future success of the game. Only time will tell, but looking at the huge number of MMOs that have failed in the shadow of World of Warcraft, the key to success needs to be a large devoted fan base, something that Square-Enix has more then likely lost with the release of a broken XIV.
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