The making of Final Fantasy XI: will Xbox’s first Final Fantasy MMO also be the last?
Dan Griliopoulos looks back on Square Enix’s most profitable Final Fantasy ever.
There have been toys, not unexpectedly. There have been novels. Films. Key-rings. Life-size replica swords. Anime cartoons. T-shirts. Clocks. Comic books. Jewellery. Soundtracks. Cuddly toys. Mobile phone apps. Chocobo hats. Radio plays. The Final Fantasy series, now 15 official games and innumerable spin-off titles strong, has sold more than 100 million games. As can be seen from that list of tat, Square Enix undeniably knows how to transform adulation into hard cash. And the biggest money-maker of them all, the one that buries VII’s much-vaunted twist under piles of banknotes, that swats aside the cinematic beauty of Final Fantasy XV with a polygonal slap… was Final Fantasy XI.