FFXIV on 360 in the balance

It looks like the chances of Final Fantasy XIV making it to Xbox 360 are currently slimmer than they ever have been.

Sony pulled a rabbit out of the hat at last year’s E3 when it topped Microsoft’s shock FFXIII announcement with an exclusive reveal of the new MMO, which at the time was touted as a PS3 and PC exclusive.

However, almost immediately after the announcement both Square Enix and Microsoft cast doubt over the exclusivity claims, and what has followed is a long period of uncertainty regarding the title’s status.

We know now that the game WAS being developed for Microsoft’s machine – but that work has been indefinitely suspended due to problems with Microsoft concerning the implementation of Xbox Live in the game’s MMO architecture.

Square wants to use its own, multi-format servers. Microsoft won’t allow that.

We have no plans at the moment [for FFXIV 360],” Square Enix VP of software development Hiromichi Tanaka told CVG. We’ve stopped the development process for now. If the situation changes we’ll work on it again, but there are no plans at the moment.

Our policy is to have a cross-platform system so you’ll be able to access the same server regardless of the platform. However, if we have to make a 360 version separately that means that’s going to cost more manpower and that can bring delays to the game. So we just want to stick to our MMO design of the same game on the same servers.

If 200,000 people maybe send an e-mail to Microsoft asking to give us access to the other side of Xbox Live then there’s a possibility.”

The comments echo those made by Tanaka last month.

Final Fantasy XIV will be released on PC on September 22nd, with the PS3 arriving in March 2011.