PC Final Fantasy XIV players to be rewarded for helping PS3 newbs

PS3 owners are eagerly (er, some of them, maybe)awaiting their chance to play the latest Final Fantasy MMO when FFXIV comes out next year. But they'll start with one distinct advantage - all the PC players, who will share the same online world, have already been playing the game for several months.

To help balance the scales of console inequality, Square Enix has said it is looking into ways for PS3 gamers to get a head start.

Game director Nobuaki Komoto said in an interview with Famitsu magazine that existing groups in the game will somehow be rewarded if they allow a new player to join in. Details on other features to help PS3 players jump into the game, however, were not discussed.

In the same article, though, it was also confirmed that the PS3 port of the game is 100% complete.

Producer Hiromichi Tanaka admitted the game had to be scaled down, just slightly, to be able to fit the PS3 specs. Textures will not be quite as crisp as they are on the PC, but Tanaka said the differences will hardly be noticeable.

Make no mistake, though. The PS3 version is all coded and finished. The Square Enix staff is just running through to make sure everything works without a hitch.

Players on both platforms share the same world, just like Square Enix did with the Xbox 360-PS2-PC release of Final Fantasy XI. The Xbox 360 dropped out of this one, though, because Microsoft has since changed its stance on multi-platform online games. Any Xbox 360 game that goes online cannot communicate with any other online community.

The PS3 version of Final Fantasy XIV should be out by March 2011.

[Source:IGN]

Nov 19, 2010

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