Naoki Yoshida: Passion, Not Profit, Drives Final Fantasy XIV Collaborations

At Opening Night Live, Capcom and Square Enix announced a Final Fantasy XIV x Monster Hunter Wilds collaboration. In a recent interview with JPGames at Gamescom, Naoki Yoshida shared how crossovers like this are approached and what motivates the decisions behind them.

“We do refer to some player data – for example we could look at Playstation data and we could see the number of Final Fantasy XIV players who also play Monster Hunter. We don’t look at all the data though but only at a small portion, but it does serve to some extent as a reference.”

“But when we’re looking at what titles to do a crossover with in Final Fantasy XIV, for us the most important thing is how much we love it, how much we love the franchise.”

He described the Monster Hunter Wilds collaboration as the result of genuine enthusiasm between both development teams.

“We thought that since we both love each others franchise so much, It would be great to swap monsters between our titles and create something new. That was the starting point of the crossover collaboration.”

Yoshida emphasized that these projects are not driven by financial goals.

“When we are working with overseas producers we’re not really looking at aspects such as money for crossovers, but what we consider is „what is fun?“ We want to provide an enjoyable experience to the gamers. So I think a lot of other companies, when they’re working together on collaborations, they’re often just exchanging characters or clothes, and they’re often focusing just on money. But for us, I think we don’t really focus on the money, but more than anything in Final Fantasy XIV, we are focusing on the passion that we have for the franchise.”

Yoshida also explained that collaborations can serve as a gateway for fans of one series to try the other.

“In terms of the crossover with Monster Hunter: There could be players who do play Final Fantasy XIV, but they’ve never played Monster Hunter before because Monster Hunter is an action game, and maybe they aren’t so good at action games. But this could serve as a starting point for them to develop an interest and then start playing Monster Hunter. On the other hand, it could also be a similar situation for Monster Hunter players. Maybe they’ve never played an MMO before, and this could be a chance to bring them into Final Fantasy XIV. If they see that there is Arkveld in Final Fantasy XIV, they might think, oh, I need to jump into the world of Final Fantasy XIV as a hunter and hunt Arkveld. This, for us, is what we’re aiming for. We think that as long as this happens, it’s okay. We haven’t made any calculations about specifically what we want to achieve. In a nutshell: Fun to play, fun to develop! (laughs)”

Source:

jpgames.de

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With over 30 million total registered players, FINAL FANTASY XIV is one of the most popular MMORPG games today. Since its relaunch in 2013 with A Realm Reborn, the game has enjoyed a stunning resurgence from the first expansion pack to 2021’s Endwalker™. Each expansion continues the epic tale that has spanned the past decade — a gripping saga of light against dark that has kept players coming back for more. The latest expansion release has players embarking on a brand-new adventure with the launch of Dawntrail™ on July 2, 2024.