FFXI 360 beta on cover disk

By Tom Bramwell Published 12 December, 2005

Play for free.

Fancy seeing how Final Fantasy XI looks on Xbox 360? Turns out that that you'll be able to very soon, as the full beta version will be bundled with the next issue of the UK's Official Xbox 360 Magazine, due on sale from January 5th.

The beta version will allow you to create a character and play online "for as long as Square Enix run the beta servers", which one would hope would be a good few months at least.

Final Fantasy XI, which Microsoft announced for Xbox 360 at E3 this year, is a straight port of the PC version, and all you'll need to play the beta version bundled with the 360 magazine next month is a broadband connection, an Xbox Live Gold account and an Xbox 360 with hard disk - available now at all good... er... oh.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ekko #1 7 years ago

    Do you publish all the press releases you get?

  • Huntcjna #2 7 years ago

    Well I personally think its very interesting news.

  • madgfx #3 7 years ago

    another PC Port this really is Next Gen online gaming at it's best keep up good work lol. Final Fantasy XI, which Microsoft announced for Xbox 360 at E3 this year, is a straight port of the PC version.

  • Dizzy #4 7 years ago

    Good news for people wanting to try out a MMORPG on their console. I might check it out to see how it works ;)

    But I am afraid it won't take much time away from WoW and CoV.

    >is a straight port of the PC version.

    Unlike the PS2 version.. that one is just...errr.... never mind...

    DUDE! It is a game that lets people on different machines play against each other (and together of course). What did you expect the 360 version to do???? Time travel? Magic happy rays?
    Edited by Dizzy at 12/12/05 @ 10:11

  • sicu #5 7 years ago

    It must have updated gfx at least no? I don't really get why they bring this Playstation2/PC game to Xbox360, unless they think they can trick Japanese in buying an Xbox360 this way... although they've been playing it on ps2 for years so i guess not.

    At least one good title on the white box ;)

  • ekko #6 7 years ago

    I guess becauses its 360 its "news". Nevermind.

  • vane101 #7 7 years ago

    @madgfx
    Ok so FF XI is not a 'next gen' game but it's part of the movement to bring online rpgs to consoles, so in that sense it's a noteworthy story.
    Edited by vane101 at 12/12/05 @ 11:41

  • sicu #8 7 years ago

    although mmorpgs have been available for consoles for a while now: Phantasy Star Online (already on dreamcast! later on gamecube) and FFXI was already available on PS2 a couple of years ago.

    They should ban mmorpgs though, I've wasted the last year and a half on them :( Offline gaming ftw! :D

  • kaosridder #9 7 years ago

    off course its news, you strange creatures. For all of us happy 360-gamers its brillant news. Just because you dont have it, doesn't mean the rest of us should be barred from knowing about this. Or should we? *mutters fascist under breath*

  • Talha #10 7 years ago

    Hey I don't believe it either. Same game different machines, ranging from PS2 to PC to Uber-PC - oops, I meant 360. That is a great concept or what! And what does this being current-gen have to do with the price of coffee in Trinidad, I don't know and care even less.

  • thegamesthething #11 7 years ago

    surely they will stick the demo on live marketplace at some point too

    dont mind spending the £6 on the mag, just seems such a waste of paper given the bollocks they print on it

  • reality_cheque #12 7 years ago

    Whenever I get the magazines I only ever look at the pretty pictures anyway - I'm sure we all know by now not to trust reviews in official magazines!

  • thegamesthething #13 7 years ago

    or indeed anywhere

  • kincaide #14 7 years ago

    I didn't even consider an xbox 360 until I read this...


    /gnashes teeth

  • Darren #15 7 years ago

    I'd be very surprised if the FFXI beta test appears on the Marketplace since it uses 5GBs of hard drive space for a full install so even if it's compressed it's going to weigh in at over 2GBs at least.

    Anyway as a freebie, FFXI should be excellent if the World of Warcraft beta was anything to go by and the actual gameplay is what makes these games so great not fancy next-gen graphics. FFXI will support 720p and anti-aliasing for starters so it should every bit as good as the PC version visually and it's FREE.

  • Kami #16 7 years ago

    Won't get me back to FFXI.

    Until they overhaul the combat, the crafting, the drops systems, the controls, the environment, the economy and a whole bunch of other stuff, my 70 White Mage/35 Black Mage and 65 Ninja/32 Warrior, complete with 98 Bonecrafting, will not return to the game.

    Having played EQ2, and more recently in the past few months World of Warcraft, FFXI is just old, and tired, and sluggish, and unbalanced. The economy when I left was almost entirely dictated by the whims of the CGF (hence why I left. I honestly could not compete on a crafting level - I was NOT prepared to continuously lose millions of gil for the off chance of making a several million gil profit), the drops system had been almost entirely messed up (You're going to put rare/ex versions of the best items out there, MAKE THEM 100% DROPS!), and enemies started to give less exp due to SE curbing the difficulty levels of enemies.

    It will take a miracle of biblical proportions to get me back to FFXI. I was there for nearly 18 months... and I'm not sorry to have said goodbye...

  • Yazoo #17 7 years ago

    It's a shame that this probably won't let existing players sign in to their own characters due to the nature of a beta test, would be very cool if we could though(!) It's going to bedlam in Valkurm Dunes a week or so after this beta comes out.

    fao sicu: there will be a graphics update :) this will be available to the PC version in the future too, although according to SE you will need a beefy machine to run that.

    fao kami: the ffxi system, as with any mmorpg is consistantly addressed. I have no idea what you mean about mobs giving less exp, as it is now possible for EP to give 40 exp, and the introduction of the Empress band gives a 50% boost to exp for 1000 exps worth of enemies. Also, factor in the NPC you can now get to aid combat and Im happy :) If youre unhappy with the game and left, fair, but many of the points you bring up were either fixed a few patches ago, or do not exist in the current game.

  • ilmaestro #18 7 years ago

    I've stopped playing the PC version as much now that I'm back home, but I'll certainly be up for getting back into it. I was actually musing over selling my 360 and buying a Japanese one now and saving the rest of the money for a UK one later, but as the FFXI beta was one of the 3 or 4 best reasons for doing so, I don't think I need to bother.

  • Yazoo #19 7 years ago

    On a second note you need Xbox Live Gold to play this according to the article? It was a key factor addressed by Square-Enix that you will just need Silver, and you subscribe to PlayOnline (SE's online service) quite seperately. I assume this is because the game is in beta? Could EG ellaborate on the information?

  • Markusdragon #20 7 years ago

    Free... online game... on... technology I don't... have

    *hyper ventilates*

  • Glitch #21 7 years ago

    ekko - Dont like the way eurogamer publishes its news, go to gamespot.

    I dont buy the gaming mags, I just use eurogamer! I think its a good post and in my case very informative! Cheers eurogamer.

    Markusdragon - rofl!

    As its the first decent MMORPG I am really looking forward to it!

  • Mr_Brown #22 7 years ago

    Sounds great! Hopefully I'll have a Hardrive by then...

  • Kami #23 7 years ago

    Yazoo, point is - it's an old game, which after near-18 months of play didn't reward. If they've addressed the issues, good for them - but when I left, we'd been bitching about that crap for a good six or seven months! Took them WAY too long.

    They still haven't addressed the CGF though, from what I've heard they still to a large extent dominate the economy. That was what ended the game for me... all that time, all that effort... and I get screwed over like that. After uising the EQ2 and WoW crafting systems, FFXI is ancient, unfair and completely stupid in comparison.

    Not to say FFXI is a bad game. But the higher in levels I got, the more I got screwed over. The new graphics look lush and awesome, visuals we'd always wanted in FFXI. But at heart, it's still the same game and I am no longer in love with it.

    No amount of cosmetic surgery will make me love FFXI again...

  • Prehensile_Plant #24 7 years ago

    If you've never cast thunder IV on Nidhogg for 1.5k damage you've never lived. :)

  • barnard666 #25 7 years ago

    Its still news worthy, hell I wouldnt buy the game, due to monthly subscriptions, but for £6 I'll play it for a couple of months and see how good it is...its a good deal...Name any other console game that this has happened with??? you cant can you...see it is news worthy.

  • Kostabi #26 7 years ago

    I'm surprised EG hasn't axed the comments page with the amount of whingers it seems to attract lately.

    Blah blah Pro-360-not news-whinge whinge.

  • Repsode #27 7 years ago

    i thought you only needed a silver account to play it. Maybe thats only when the full game comes out and S-E start to use their own servers. Some guy on IGN(90% adverts, guaranteed) was pissed because it was essentially a 3 year old game and that it uses the Playonline service more than LIVE. WHAT DID HE EXPECT? For 360 players to play with those on PC and PS2 it has to be the same game using the same online system! Anyone going in thinking that the graphics are going to look much better or gameplay is going to be better can think again.To interface with the older systems it has to be similar. As I see it, the 360 is but one gateway to play the same game others have been playing for years.

    Personally I PREFER it not being associated with Live. The most civil online community I have EVER experienced could be tarnished.