PS4 trailer

[Camate]

Greetings, everyone.

As there have been some comments and questions about the migration of saved data from the PS3 version to the PS4 version, I'd like to share the below comments from Hiroshi Minagawa about this topic.

During the PS4 version beta test it will not be possible to move locally saved data over from the PS3 to the PS4. However, this is an extremely high priority task and we are currently working on this so that on launch day you'll be able to do transfer your data.

I'd like to make a more detailed announcement after we've implemented and tested it, but for now, please take a look at an overview.

• PS3 local saved data is saved to the PSN server. (This is a link to the user guide on the Sony Computer Entertainment website.)
  • This data includes: hotbar information, gear set information, macro data, and item sorting data.
  • A maximum of 8 characters' data can be saved at one time according to the latest log in history order.
• The data saved above can be loaded from the PS4 FFXIV launcher menu.

Some things to note:

• If you wish to save data for more than 8 characters, you will have to log in to update your log in history, and perform the saves in phases.
• Transferring of data to the Windows version (PS3 version to Windows version) is not possible.
  (This is a restriction set in the PSN agreement as well as the PlayStation saved file agreement)
• Data cannot be transferred from the PS4 to the PS3.

* Currently this is still in-development and there is a possibility it changes before release. We appreciate your understanding.

In the future, instead of using the PSN server, I'm curious if it would be possible to export this data to the FFXIV data server and then import it locally and if there are any plans to address this.

When we were discussing the specifications of this, we had also thought about a plan to build a specific server for it. From a software implementation stand point this would be the simplest way and give us the most freedom; however, we determined that preparation of the equipment was not very realistic.

• The size of a single FFXIV character’s saved data is extremely large.
  (This includes all of the items they possess and hotbars for all classes and jobs.)
• As a maximum of 40 characters can be created on a single account, the maximum amount would have to be supported.
• Server expansion would be necessary to handle the peak stress directly after the PS4 version release.
• With the server expansion, data center expansion would also be required (the time and cost of this is extremely large), and it would take, at minimum, half a year to set up the hardware and prepare it for operation.
• The difference between the usage of this at peak time compared to the regular everyday usage would be extremely large, and the maintenance costs would be much more than necessary.

Based on these points above, we decided to drop the idea for a standalone server for the transferring of data across platforms at the of the PS4 version release.

Plans for the future

As I wrote above, since this is something that requires an extremely large amount of resources, I’m not able to make any promises, and I apologize about this.

We've been receiving your monthly subscription fees and putting them into development and operation. This is an important finite resource, and if we were to allocate a large portion for only this feature it would result in a trade-off with other game features and additions.

Due to this, we will be continuing to look into other methods besides having a standalone server, which include methods that are somewhat difficult to implement but the operational cost is low.