One of the well acclaimed Final Fantasy games in recent years, “Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn” has been available on the PS3, PS4, as well as the PC. However, the developers at Square Enix have said that it never found its way to the Xbox One because Microsoft’s infrastructure did not allow for cross-platform play, especially those that allow players from any platform to play together on the same servers. This however altered in March this year.
According to Chris Charla, Director of ID@Xbox, which is Microsoft’s indie game developer program, in addition to natively supporting cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows 10 games that use Xbox Live, we’re enabling developers to support cross-network play as well. This means players on Xbox One and Windows 10 using Xbox Live will be able to play with players on different online multiplayer networks – including other console and PC networks. Charla said this in a post announcing its Game Developers Conference plans.
Naoki Yoshida, the game’s director told Polygon, Microsoft actually approached the Final Fantasy XIV team about the cross-platform opportunity. When our team reviewed the regulations that are associated with that, we realized that Microsoft may not have the experience or understanding of running an MMORPG as an online game genre just yet. The Final Fantasy XIV team has fed back to Microsoft that there are certain elements of its regulations that we would have to consider waived. We’re waiting on Microsoft’s response for that, but we are having discussions.