Square Enix is officially entering the testing phase of the mobile version of Final Fantasy XIV, starting with China. The immensely popular MMO set in the Final Fantasy world had a rough start, nearly failing to get off the ground when it first launched. Thanks to a huge overhaul, it's gone on to become a success story, instead, available on PC as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
The game is now poised to enter the mobile market, as well, as was announced late last year. A new trailer has been shared on Reddit and YouTube through unofficial sources, linking out to the official Chinese testing page for Final Fantasy XIV Mobile. According to the trailer and website, s are now open through May 22 for FFXIV fans in China who want to help playtest the game. The actual playtest is scheduled to begin on May 23.
Final Fantasy XIV Is Coming To Mobile
The Game Enters Testing This Month
Final Fantasy XIV mobile is being developed by a Tencent development studio, LightSpeed, and it will act more like a companion game than a port. When the title was immersive story and gameplay of FFXIV. Not too much else was revealed about the mobile game, the extent of its social features, or what monetization will look like.
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The testing phase will be primarily technical, to ensure that the servers can handle the strain of a large number of players. Interestingly, the test does contain paid content, even though the save data won't carry over after the test ends. Instead, Square Enix will give away equivalent in-game currency to participants based on the total amount of real money that was spent during the test.
It'll Be Hard To Port A Game Like FFXIV To Mobile
MMOs Like FFXIV Have A Lot Of Bells And Whistles
Like most MMOs, Final Fantasy XIV has to balance showing a huge amount of information on the screen at one time. The game works best on PC, where there are enough keys on the keyboard and a useful pointing device to help players navigate from one part of the UI to another.
The console ports do a decent job of bringing all this information into a format with fewer buttons and no mouse, but the experience is a bit less streamlined and can take a bit to get used to. Now that FFXIV prepares to enter the mobile gaming market as well, it's hard to imagine how Square Enix managed to cram all the input and info into a platform that has a very limited visual space that doubles as a touchpad.
The new trailer shows a bit of how this will work, using a streamlined interface and distilling the full MMO into its main story components (rather than trying to remake the full game in its entirety). However, Final Fantasy XIV fans will likely need to actually try the mobile format to see if Square Enix managed to condense the massive multiplayer title onto the limited screens of mobile devices.
Source: Reddit, YouTube, Final Fantasy XIV Mobile