FFXIV Could Make Its Way To Nintendo Switch Still, Yoshi-P Says They're "Making Progress"

Square Enix certainly wants to get its flagship MMORPG onto as many platforms as possible. That's usually a given for most games that don't have some type of "exclusivity" agreement, but it's probably more so the case for Final Fantasy XIV and other games that can generate monthly recurring income.

FFXIV finally made its way to Xbox consoles earlier this year, so why not target a Nintendo Switch release next? Well, obviously I'm sure there are power concerns. Despite being a massively popular piece of hardware, the Switch does lag behind its console competitors when it comes to sheer console power. That doesn't necessarily mean that it couldn't hit the Switch, but there would probably be a few tradeoffs, particularly given the graphics update that came with the Dawntrail expansion.

Yoshi-P does still seem eager to see the MMO on the Switch, though. He even hinted at it in interviews a few months back.

In an interview from Gamescom over on Gamereactor, the game's producer/director was asked about a potential Switch version and, while careful with his words, he seemed hopeful. "I'm sure that all of the media and our players probably suspecting they really want to have our game release on Nintendo's consoles, but the concept that we have for Final Fantasy XIV is to release our game on as many devices as possible," said Yoshi-P, "So looking towards achieving that goal. We are working towards, making progress and we are having discussions. So I hope that everyone can look forward to news in the time to come."

That said, take this with a grain of salt, we've literally been hearing about these "talks" with Nintendo since as early as 2019.

With all the Switch 2 rumors and announcements we've seen so far, I would think a release on that system would be more likely. Given that Square Enix intends to support the PS4 version of the MMO as long as the number of PS4 players is worth doing so, if a Switch 2 could be more in line with at least the power of a PS4, we could have some FFXIV on the go. Cloud gaming providing some of the heavy lift could certainly be an option, too.

My question would be the same I had on the Xbox, though. I love games being on all platforms, but given the Xbox release came so late, what was the gain in FFXIV's audience by releasing on the Xbox? In terms of "new players," did releasing on the console make sense? I don't have numbers, obviously, but given the MMO was out for basically 10 years at that point, it's hard to imagine there's a huge audience that specifically waited to try FFXIV until it came to Xbox. I would think the "new" audience on the Switch would be even smaller, if I had to guess.

That said, there's probably enough of us that already play the MMO that would take it on the go on our Switch...thus meaning we'd have to buy yet another copy. How many do you own by now? (I'm at 3 platforms.)

Would you play FFXIV on a Switch console? Will we even see one released?