Have you heard that the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is getting a mobile version? In a video announcement, Final Fantasy XIV game director Naoki Yoshida announced FFXIV Mobile, a joint production between Square Enix and Tencent’s Lightspeed Studios. The announcement was accompanied by a teaser trailer showing Warriors of Light in locations all across the game’s world of Eorzea.
It seems as though FFXIV Mobile will be a reset of sorts for the MMORPG, featuring content from the base game without anything from its five expansions. In the video, Yoshida said that Lightspeed Studios was working to, “faithfully recreate the story, duties, battle content, and other aspects of the original game.” Lightspeed Studios, known for PUBG Mobile, is a subsidiary of Tencent which has had success adapting a number of mobile games from other companies’ IP including Monster Hunter, Pokémon, and Call of Duty.
The teaser trailer didn’t exactly show what FFXIV Mobile combat would look like. But judging from the little bit of battle it did show, it seems like Square Enix might be aiming to make a FFXIV version of Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition — a stripped down mobile version of the 2016 RPG with simplified combat controls and chibi-fied character art. FFXIV Mobile’s website boasts that players will have access to nine job classes (the full-version of the game has 21) that they’ll be able to switch classes with a single tap rather than requiring players to dig into their inventory and equip a job stone.
Neither Yoshida’s video nor the website went into detail about how much the game will cost and what, if any, traditional mobile game elements will make it in. However, according to a report in Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, FFXIV Mobile will be free-to-play but will not contain any gacha elements. This potentially means the game will have to incorporate monetization some other way and if Square Enix knows anything at all about its player base, then expect to pay for mounts and, critically, player costumes. After all, glamour is the true endgame.