Square Enix on Final Fantasy XIV's future

For the user interface, market and battle system, those three aspects we noticed players are not satisfied with. You will probably see a drastic change in six months' time.

But the world, graphics and storyline are things we're really proud of. They will remain the same and we hope you can enjoy them.

For the beginners, we will make it easier to join the game. We'll have tutorials and more quests. For the high-end gamers, we'll implement new monsters and different content. We already have a plan for a year's worth of time, so please look forward to all the updates.

One of the most difficult things about this type of MMO was the balance. Traditionally, MMOs are for hardcore gamers, especially PC gamers. But we wanted to appeal to light gamers and console users. That's something we wanted to make a good balance for – so the hardcore players could enjoy it, but the casual players could also enjoy it. That was quite challenging.

We believe players had a very high expectation of this title from the alpha and beta tests. We received a lot of feedback from the beta tests. The development team should have focused on shaping up the game during the beta process, but because we were really concentrating on de-bugging the game – fixing all the bugs – that's one of the reasons why we were not able to have all the requests implemented during the beta process.

That's why we do understand the reaction from the players, now the game's out. Therefore, the development team is working really hard to bring it back to the level we planned to have ready for the players.

We do agree first impressions are very important, but when the game is released that's not the end for MMOs. It's a really long process and that's just one of the points you pass when you're developing MMOs.

We believe we should concentrate on making the game how we want to make it, to satisfy all the players and meet their expectations. That's something we're trying to do as soon as possible.

Our priority is to bring satisfaction to Windows players, so we're working hard on that. But as soon as we feel that's done, we will focus on the PS3 version.

That being said, the Windows version is working on PS3 at the moment. We're focusing on optimisation and adjusting the balance as well as fixing all the bugs. We would like to bring it to PS3 players as soon as possible.

We're always looking into the possibilities, but the situation hasn't changed. Nothing's happening at the moment.

That being said, we do still have the version we created for the 360. If we start working on it again, we should be able to bring it out in a short time.

Compared to FFXI, it is much bigger than we were expecting. Because we have the PS3 version coming out, we do hope both players will enjoy the game and so the subscribers will grow.

All MMOs usually have a big initial shipment. What happened with FFXI was we introduced the game on different platforms in different regions, so the subscribers grew gradually. That's something we hope will happen with Final Fantasy XIV – it will continually grow.

The game will be different from when you stopped playing. There must be a reason why you stopped playing, but please look for the announcements on the different updates. We hope the version updates will bring satisfaction to you, so hopefully you'll enjoy a new experience with Final Fantasy XIV.

From the community point of view, since we don't have an official forum (because there are different languages our policy is to not have an official forum) that's why, maybe, some players worry their voice isn't reaching the development team. But please be assured we're taking your voice seriously and we're gathering all the feedback from you.

Even if it's a negative voice, please feel free to let us know. We're taking it very seriously.