Online gaming just wasn’t a big thing on PS2. FF11 was the only online game I was even aware of at the time. I wanted to play it but it wasn’t realistic.
FF fans weren’t PC gamers by and large at that point. I’m kind of amazed the game survived at all. It was far ahead of its time and not well aligned with the market.
They definitely were a barrier to entry for console, but given WoW has never had a console release, and FFXI for Windows was released before PS2 in NA (Oct 2003/Mar 2004), I’m not sure that’s completely the case.
I always thought it was more to do with FFXI being menu based (and slower to begin with) rather than using a simpler system with action keys like you get with WoW and later MMOs.
IMO, the
onlymajor reason it wasn’t more popular in the beginning was having to pay for the modem and HDD to play on the ps2.Online gaming just wasn’t a big thing on PS2. FF11 was the only online game I was even aware of at the time. I wanted to play it but it wasn’t realistic.
FF fans weren’t PC gamers by and large at that point. I’m kind of amazed the game survived at all. It was far ahead of its time and not well aligned with the market.
It was (and to my knowledge still is) huge in Japan, it had a large cult following that kept it alive as western gamers favored WoW a bit more.
They definitely were a barrier to entry for console, but given WoW has never had a console release, and FFXI for Windows was released before PS2 in NA (Oct 2003/Mar 2004), I’m not sure that’s completely the case.
I always thought it was more to do with FFXI being menu based (and slower to begin with) rather than using a simpler system with action keys like you get with WoW and later MMOs.
Oh definitely, I’m not saying it was the only reason, just saying it was a limiting factor.
Edit: Nope, I’m an idiot.
I did say only, meant more “major”