American FFXI due in October

Final Fantasy XI has finally received a ship date for US PC gamers, Square Enix announced on Monday. The EverQuest-influenced MMORPG, which has close to 250,000 Japanese subscribers, is due out in October. If you haven't been keeping up and are interested in seeing how the game will run on your hardware, there's an official benchmark tool available (direct file link).

Based loosely on the Final Fantasy franchise, FFXI is set in the world of Vana'diel, which is split into three areas, and players can pick from all the usual class options before the go off to build up an empire of chocobos, airships and sorcery.

There's still no word on the PS2 version of the game, although it's expected that Sony will launch it alongside the much maligned HDD adapter when that eventually shows up.