Yoshi-P Wants To Make An MMO From Scratch And Talks The Future Of The Final Fantasy Series

When it comes to famous game developers, few (especially these days) are as beloved as Square Enix’s Yoshi-P. As the man known for resurrecting Final Fantasy XIV and somehow still being humble enough to be as open and honest with the players as possible, he’s someone a lot of people look forward to for insight into the gaming industry, particularly the future of the thirty-plus-year-old Final Fantasy series.

Currently, in addition to working on XIV, he’s also at the helm of the series’ next single-player installment Final Fantasy XVI. Recently, he sat down to talk with Inverse about the franchise and his thoughts on gaming in general. We won’t post the entire thing here, you can head to their site to read it in full, but there were some interesting takeaways from the interview.

First, Yoshi-P believes that as gaming continues to evolve, what we think of as “online gaming” will go away. As he points out, most games today have some online element. The big difference is whether they’re single or multiplayer.

He also believes we’ll see big changes in the MMORPG genre, and that we likely would have seen some by now if the pandemic and other issues hadn’t caused a tech shortage. As it is now, he feels it will be delayed several years. That said, quantum computing is something he feels will have a serious impact on game development over the next decade or so. As will new devices and tech like VR.

Tech aside, games are still made by people, and Yoshi-P addresses that as well. The games industry doesn’t exactly have the best track record for how it deals with its workers. Things are slowly improving, but there’s a lot that still needs to be done. Yoshi-P believes that changes in this area need to be made for the industry's survival. As he tells Inverse, he thinks the solution is to “keep examining the issue and meticulously improve management methods.” One of these improvements is apparently to make people take breaks in order to avoid burnout. In this case, Yoshi-P could maybe take some of his own advice.

It seems that Yoshi-P won’t be taking any significant breaks any time soon. Not only does he have big plans for the future of XIV – which he plans to keep going as long as possible, but he also “occasionally” thinks about making one more MMO from scratch.