What was the reason given for closing console versions of ffxi?

[Isal]

The whole idea to cutting costs is to reduce waste and not cause damage to the product to the point it makes people quit.

If cost cutting leads to player losses then you're doing it wrong.

I'm not sure why sustaining their player base after the game goes into maintenance mode would be one of their priorities... Between Grand Masters and the mobile client, they've clearly decided to put time and money into alternative interpretations of Vana'diel, I believe SE's goal in cutting costs is to cut costs.

[Alhanelem]

In Japan, they produced PS2 HDD units from 2001 to 2010, 9 years versus our 9 months, and Europe's 0 months (excepting Linux Kits, which used the same hard drives, but different interface software bundled with them). There are lots more of them than got distributed for North America. Best of all, the hard drives are exactly the same in Japan and North America (no region lock on hardware besides the PS2 itself, just on software), so you could import one if yours died. PS2 HDDs are in much larger supply than dev kits.

while time to failiure obviously depends on how much you use it, the youngest ones are 5+ years old at this point, and the oldest ones are likely to be dead or dying if they were being used regularly (which I know many ps2 players with failed or failing hard drives) While the truly die hard ps2 player could search around and find one in good shape, it's still a fair consideration. The PS2 is no longer a supported platform (as in by sony, not by FFXI) no matter which country you're in, and it really doesn't make financial sense to FFXI to keep supporting an unsupported platform that's shrinking rapidly.

It's a shame, really. I don't have anything against ps2 players, but anyone had to have known that this would happen eventually- only a matter of when.