The Future of Final Fantasy XIV, Server Issues, & Cultural Representation: An Interview With Naoki Yoshida

19.10.2023 - 15:03 / screenrant.com

Even after completing its 10th anniversary, is bound to continue expanding. The critically acclaimed MMORPG has hundreds of hours of content and seems to be pushing for even more, as the next expansion,, is set to arrive in Summer 2024. Additionally, the game will also receive a whole new pool of players, as it will finally become compatible with Xbox consoles through the Series X/S family. With a new chunk of content planned and a new player base inbound, is expected to be as busy as ever, even if its main 10-year saga of Light and Darkness has come to an end.

The game is directed by Naoki Yoshida, known by the community as Yoshi-P. The Japanese developer also acted as a Producer on Final Fantasy 16, released earlier this year. Even though the MMORPG and the single-player title are vastly different, there are lessons learned across the development of the games that make a difference moving forward. had a chat with Yoshi-P during BGS (Brazil Game Show) 2023 about the future of the MMORPG. As draws closer to its next expansion, Yoshida also promises big surprises and the prospect of more years of content, depending on how the community reacts to what is released.

Related: FFXIV On Xbox Has An Incredible Deal For New Players

Naoki Yoshida: and, while [products of] the same CBU (Creative Business Unit), CBU 3, are completely different development teams. They are also completely different games. One is a standalone game whereas the other is an MMO. So, there is not a lot of overlap in the development of those two. However, with, we found out that a lot of the people playing are those who have never played. We are getting feedback from a type of people who have never played, and that feedback is a lot different from the feedback from players of, so taking the feedback from non-MMO players, we are able to take it back and incorporate it into, and this is something we can definitely use moving forward.

Naoki Yoshida: One thing that we have already done is having opened a new North America Data Center, as well as new Worlds. The next step is to open more Worlds on top of that – these physical new Worlds to create more space for players. Another thing that we are doing to handle this influx of players is something that we have been looking into and researching for the past five years, which is Cloud Data Centers. We’re ready to implement that and do a test very soon. We’ll have more information about that soon. Once we’ve done that test, we get feedback and can prove that this is a good idea, then that gives us another option for handling that large influx of players. We can have these Cloud Data Centers that can be used to handle this extra influx and bring those together into something bigger.

Naoki