FFXIV: Dawntrail a ‘starting point for the next 10 years’ – BBC News

It’s a Friday night in June in Tokyo and Naoki Yoshida has weekend plans.

Pretty standard, you might think. But Yoshida-san, the director of Final Fantasy 14 (FF14), knows this is probably his last chance to relax.

When he speaks to BBC Newsbeat, Dawntrail, the latest expansion to the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is a week away from being released.

After a “disastrous” launch in 2010, FF14 has become the highest-grossing title in the franchise’s history, according to publisher Square Enix.

The game has changed so much that servers struggled to keep up with demand when the previous expansion, Endwalker, launched in December 2021.

It’s not the only change since FF14 first came out. The industry, and Japan’s place within it, has also changed in the past decade.

Final Fantasy is a huge cultural export for the country, and Square Enix has said it wants to focus more on the “global market” and its fans around the world.

Evidence of this approach can be found in Dawntrail, a key moment for Yoshida-san and his team, and one he calls “the starting point for the next 10 years of Final Fantasy 14.”

Endwalker brought a decade-long storyline to a close and Dawntrail opens a new saga. It also adds a graphical overhaul to the game, along with new character classes and other features.

Billed as a “summer vacation,” the action takes place in the sunny, Latin American-inspired Tural region of FF14’s world.

Yoshida-san says that Final Fantasy games previously drew inspiration from Europe and East Asia and his team wanted to try something different.

He says Central and South America are a “huge area” with “a lot of history” to draw from.

Square Enix has been criticized in the past for its authentic representation of other cultures. The company’s recent games have attempted to address this.

Yoshida-san says he’s always considered FF14 a “global game,” but he agrees that the influence of social media has increased and “it’s become easier for people to come together and make their voices heard.”

He admits there are “risks involved” in portraying other cultures, but his team has made it a point “to learn about the culture, read the texts available.”

“The world is diverse,” he says.

“There are people with many different values, many different religions, and many different relationships.

“And so it’s very important, I think, that we understand those points.”

Final Fantasy games have always combined Japanese influences with Western influences, but some argue that the series is having an identity crisis lately.

Yoshida-san tells Newsbeat Square Enix makes “50% to 80%” of its profits from “overseas fans,” who are “very important to consider when making the game.”

But he believes a balance must be found.

“We were born in Japan, we grew up in Japan. So what we got was part of Japanese culture,” he says.

“So if we focus too much on the foreign audience, we don’t have that background and context.

“If we focus so much on the foreign audience, everything we make wouldn’t be successful.”

However, Yoshida-san says that developers cannot live in a bubble.

“I think knowing the world is very important for us in our further development,” he says.

Another major change has recently occurred for Final Fantasy.

Square Enix produces games for many different platforms, but has a history of exclusive deals to ensure certain titles only appear on certain consoles.

Sales of two recent PlayStation 5 games, Final Fantasy 16 (FF16) and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, have reportedly disappointed in Japan.

Following their release, CEO Takashi Kiryu told investors that the company would “aggressively pursue a multiplatform strategy” to get its games onto more machines.

Yoshida-san is familiar with discussions about exclusivity, having released the highly anticipated Xbox version of FF14 this year.

It’s a sign of a broader shift in the industry, with companies becoming less selective about where their games appear.

“We want players to be able to play regardless of the device they are playing on,” says Yoshida-san.

“We want them to play our game and all connect and participate and then play together in the same world.”

Yoshida-san says Xbox CEO Phil Spencer “put a lot of time” into releasing FF14 on Xbox.

“Thanks to his hard work, I’m super happy that we were able to complete this successfully,” he says.

“But of course there are still platforms.”

When asked what they could be, Yoshida-san doesn’t hesitate for a moment.

“Of course,” he says. “It stands to reason that this would be Nintendo’s platform.

“I’m sure people are waiting for the answer to that question.”

But for now, there’s a more pressing issue on Yoshida-san’s mind: giving Dawntrail “the best possible launch.”

After his weekend rest, he expects to be busy.

“I’m sure it’s going to give us sleepless nights because we’re just focusing on the status of service delivery,” he said.

Players will remember Endwalker’s difficult early years, but Yoshida-san says he’s not one to dwell too much on the past.

“It’s what has already happened,” he says. ‘And that doesn’t really get us any further.

“It is our job to look to the future.”