Final Fantasy 14 producer/director Naoki Yoshida has confirmed there are no plans to introduce NFTs into the fan-favourite MMO “at this point”.
The statement was made during today’s Letter from the Producer livestream, in which Yoshida talked about NFTs more broadly in gaming, and then specifically addressed the blockchain tech and Square Enix’s hugely-popular MMO.
“Based on how Final Fantasy 14 is designed, we don’t intend on incorporating any sort of NFT element in the game at this point,” Yoshida said (thanks, FanByte).
“If anybody is worried or concerned about it, I can clearly state at this time that we do not have any intentions to incorporate that into the game.”
The announcement comes just weeks after Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda published a letter in which he expressed hope that NFTs and blockchain technology will become a “major trend” in gaming – something Yoshida directly acknowledged in his broadcast.
In a New Year’s letter, Matsuda expressed what he believes will be major areas of growth for the industry in 2022, including cloud gaming, AI, and blockchain games, the latter of which “are built upon the premise of a token economy and therefore hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth”.
“We did notice a lot of reactions, especially from the Western [audience] about NFTs, many comments about how [they’re] opposed to NFTs,” Yoshida admitted earlier today.
“I do understand our CEO Matsuda commented on the concept of NFTs in his New Year’s message, and there might be a little bit of sensitivity and nervousness around the topic.”
Interestingly, though, Yoshida is seemingly curious about in NFTs in ways “completely unrelated to FF14”.
“I do believe the vehicle itself could potentially be something that makes the concept of a video game a little bit more interesting,” he said. “That being said, we would need a specific game design that would accommodate for the concept of NFTs.
“If there’s ever an opportunity to go into it in deeper detail, I would like to talk about it. I think there’s a potential of utilising it without going in a wrong or bad direction.
“But again, no NFTs in FF14, so don’t worry.”
ICYMI, free trials are coming back to Final Fantasy 14.
Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida made the announcement in his most recent Letter from the Producer Livestream broadcast earlier today, confirming the free trial will be available from 22nd February next week.
Free trials were pulled at the end of last year, after a massive increase in its player base resulted in long queues ahead of the release of the new expansion Endwalker. It only returned to sale a couple of weeks ago.
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