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Top Final Fantasy XIV Devs Replaced, PS3 Version Delayed
After Final Fantasy XIV's troubled launch and subsequent attempt to placate angry fans, Square Enix has decided that the game's leadership needs to be replaced. They've asked players to patiently stick around until they're ready to unveil their new plans for the game, extending the free trial period to compensate. Square also announced bad news for PS3 owners who were still somehow interested in the game: "Regarding the PlayStation 3, it is not our wish to release a simple conversion of the Windows version in its current state, but rather an update that includes all the improvements we have planned. For that reason, we have made the difficult decision to delay the release of the PlayStation 3 version beyond the originally announced date of March 2011."
No, this isn't an unrealistic ship date problem. This is a fundamental design flaw problem. This game has the worst UI of any MMO post-WoW, and even most ones pre-WoW (the exception being FF XI). It was clearly designed for consoles with a very bad PC port.
The game was shipped with no AH and no mail, and a completely awful player store system instead that makes it a giant timesink just to *find* things that are for sale, let alone do price comparison and things that any modern game should allow.
A post documenting all the flaws in this game would be about five pages long, so I'll stop now. Suffice to say that the problems are much worse then simple lack of time.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates