https://gamerescape.com/2020/12/15/final-fantasy-xi-mobile-cancelled/
https://gamerescape.com/2020/12/15/final-fantasy-xi-mobile-cancelled/
I expected this to happen with Nexon leading the way of the direction. A korean based company trying to MMO mobile a MMO they've most likely never touched. Considering they failed at a few different Japanese based games in PVP and MMO anyways, I'm not surprised. Kind of glad it was closed with them doing it. They should never have been given the reigns, sadly.
Nexon paid the FFXI team for this, that money back in 2015 helped fund the creation of rhapsodies zone / story etc. So I'm glad it happened.
At that time FFXI was near closure, so Nexon obviously thought the game would close and 60-70k players would all flood to their mobile game as the only option left to them. when the XI team decided to keep the game going and updated it messed up thier plans.
If you read the original annoucement they were making a collectable card game hybrid mmo version of FFXI anyway, it wasn't what people thought it was.
Just because they had the rights for 5 years, didn't mean they put 5 years work into it. From what I saw there wasn't much work went into it at all, and if they canceled it that means they had a lot of work left to do (or they would of just released it anyway).
We don't even know what the deal was, for all we know they bought the rights for 5 years in 2015 and they were about to be forced to pay more.
You don't sit on your ass for years before actually fcancelling a project. COmpanies don't like wasting money. Even a project that's sitting idle is wasting money.
It is more common than you think for games to make it much of the way through the development cycle before being cancelled. Hell its not even that rare for a game to be more or less completed and just not get released. Star Fox 2 was 100% complete but it was cancelled because they didn't think it would sell (or something) in the face of the N64. Sega cancelled a fully completed beat-em-up title because they thought it could compete with their in house Streets of Rage franchise back on the Genesis/Megadrive.
Long Live Final Fantasy XI (PC).
I had little interest in it as a mobile game, but I very much liked the idea of a remastered/remade FFXI. Although I guess this became some sort of card game at some point so it probably wouldn't have been anything I wanted it to be anyway.
Hopefully the next Vana'diel Project has better luck.
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