Final Fantasy 14 is one of the most popular MMOs ever, alongside World of Warcraft and the surprisingly still-growing Runescape. While the Square Enix MMO didn’t originally release in the greatest shape, the game’s 2013 re-launch A Realm Reborn cemented the game as one of the greats spearheaded by director Naoki ‘Yoshi-P’ Yoshida.
It’s been twelve years since then, and players have been treated to countless updates and numerous expansions, and Yoshi-P is still guiding the game, alongside working on other projects such as Final Fantasy 16. But after over a decade of working on the same game, is Yoshida ready to move on? Not at all.
Speaking to Radio Times at Gamescom 2025, Yoshi-P explained that the MMO has been his “lifework” since working on the game’s re-launch all those years ago. While there have been ups and downs on the project, he will only stop working on the game if he’s forced to stop.
“As someone who started the relaunch of the 14 game, and I have the responsibility for that, as long as they don’t tell me, ‘you’ve got to give up now’, I will continue to make Final Fantasy 14 my life’s work,” Yoshida told the outlet at Gamescom. “And, as an employee of the company, if people want me to continue working on 14 then I will do it.”
“Having said that, now I’m 52 years old, and if I end up dying I will no longer be able to keep working on the game so I do need to put in some good efforts to make sure that I don’t die as well,” he continued. “But when I get older, so, for example, when I hit the age of 60, or even older than that maybe I can’t always be working on that and there would naturally be new challenges that I would need to take on.”
The Final Fantasy 14 director explains that he simply doesn’t “think about things in terms of a short timespan”. While some developers may get frustrated at being on the same project for 12 years, the MMO lead simply wants to keep improving the game and satisfying players.
“Always I have in my mind, ‘I want to continue working on the development of 14 and continue enjoying the game together with our players’”, the game director continued.
Alongside discussing his dedication to continuing his work on the Final Fantasy MMO for as long as possible, Yoshida teased that the next major expansion for the game will have more “hype” than the controversial release of Dawntrail. While Dawntrail was designed as a “vacation” for players, the next expansion will bring back the stakes that players are used to.
“Of course, we haven’t announced the next expansion,” Yoshida smiled. “I think people are thinking ‘well, they probably are working on the next expansion’. The only thing I will say is that we will do our best in the development. So, hypothetically, if we hypothetically already were developing it, I would say, ‘the development is going smoothly.’”
Final Fantasy 14 is available on Xbox Series, PS4, PS5 and PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version of the iconic MMO might also be in the works.
