Final Fantasy XIV Development History
Final Fantasy XIV, previously codenamed Rapture, was first mentioned in August 2005, when Square Enix announced they had begun working on a new MMORPG, but neither confirmed nor denied that it was a sequel to Final Fantasy XI, or that it was Final Fantasy-related.
Hiromichi Tanaka, producer of the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, stated in April 2006 that developers were working to make Rapture a worldwide release for the PlayStation 3 and Windows Vista, before announcing in February 2007 that the game was being developed for the Xbox 360 and for personal computers, and that it might be brought to the PlayStation 3 at some stage as well.
Square Enix announced at GDC 2008 that the new MMO was being targeted at all aforementioned systems and hinted that Mac and Linux clients would not be out of the question.
On June 2, 2009, at the Sony E3 Conference, Final Fantasy XIV was officially announced for the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows through a trailer mixing pre-rendered CGI and actual in-game sequences running from the Crystal Tools engine. The game will be produced by the same team working on Final Fantasy XI including Hiromichi Tanaka, and will be directed by Nobuaki Komoto. Akihiko Yoshida is the art director, and Nobuo Uematsu is composing the music. The game will have cross-platform servers between PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows, making all servers accessible from any country. The PlayOnline system will not be used for the game, but a solution is in the works for those wishing to easily switch between FFXIV and FFXI.
Since that time one year ago quite a bit has occurred and FFXIV is currently in the alpha test phase; soon to be in the beta test stages. FFXIV will be beta tested for longer than the 4 months that Final Fantasy XI was and is intended for release in the fourth quarter of 2010.
