In July 2023, Final Fantasy XIV director and producer Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida made waves by announcing that after years of PC and PlayStation exclusivity, the game would finally come to Xbox. As part of the Fan Festival 2023 in Las Vegas, Yoshida and Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealed that FFXIV would come to Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, with beta tests in early 2024, and a full release in time for Dawntrail.
Now, almost six months later, the Xbox Series X|S open beta tests are starting, as revealed in a post on the official FFXIV Lodestone site on Feb. 5. The FFXIV Xbox Series X|S open beta test will commence Wednesday, Feb. 21, reportedly beginning at 12am (PST). The open beta will supposedly consist of just the free trial, although with that covering the game all the way up to Stormblood, it doesn’t seem like much of a restriction.
However, this limitation also brings up a contentious point: If the open beta only consists of the free trial, what about existing players? Well, unfortunately, if you’re not a new player, you’re not invited to the Xbox party. As per the announcement: “We ask any players, who wish to play Final Fantasy XIV on Xbox with an existing Square Enix account and its associated characters, to please wait until the full Xbox launch after the open beta test concludes.”
And, to play the game, you’ll need to link your Microsoft account with your Square Enix account. That means, if you, hypothetically, created a new account just to play on Xbox, and then later, tried to link your existing account, you’re stuck with that free trial account. In fact, Square Enix pleaded with players not to try this, asking in the announcement that “existing players please wait until the official release to link your Square Enix account to your Microsoft account.”
So when is the official release date for the Xbox Series X|S version of FFXIV? Well, Square Enix aren’t saying, but did confirm it will be immediately after the end of the open beta. How long will that be? Well, for a server stress test last year, Square Enix only needed a single week of testing. A full platform might need some more tests than that, so expect maybe a month or multiple months of waiting time for a full Xbox version of FFXIV to be released.
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