Open Beta For FFXIV On Xbox Gets A Date, But If You Want To Play Once It’s Live You’ll Need That Game Pass

After the long, long wait and a whole lot of “Will they? Won’t they?”, Square Enix is ready for the last step before bringing Final Fantasy XIV to the Xbox – the open beta test. Today, the XIV team announced that the open beta for the Xbox Series X|S version will kick off on February 21 “around" 12:00 a.m. Pacific.

The plan is to launch the live version once the MMORPG's beta test ends, although the date for that depends on how things go during the test. If you play in the beta, the data from your time in the beta will be automatically transferred and you won’t have to redownload the game. This is important for those testing as only those who are starting with a completely fresh account can play, so it will allow them to keep their progress.

For those of us with existing accounts – including players currently taking part in the free trial – the devs ask that we wait until the game launches to start playing the Xbox version. Of course, if you really want to create another account just to do the open beta, there’s not really anything stopping you.

Once the game officially launches, players who want to play on Xbox will need to link their Xbox and Square Enix accounts. Here’s where the fun part comes in. If you’re planning on playing the full subbed version of the game on Xbox, you will also need to pay for Xbox Game Pass. Core or Ultimate is fine. If you’re going to be doing the free trial for a bit, you’ll be able to skip that until you actually begin paying a sub, so yes, it will cost Xbox fans more to play Final Fantasy XIV.

It's a little weird since PS Plus isn't required on PlayStation. Then again, if you’re an Xbox fan, chances are pretty solid you have the game pass for everything else it does, so maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds. Full details on the beta test can be found on the XIV site.