It looks like Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is doing just fine, with recent expansion Shadowbringers introducing a raft of new content to get stuck into, and millions of registered users. However, it appears that at one point its devs were a little worried that at the time its predecessor version, 2010’s Final Fantasy XIV, was launched, the series’ future might be in question.

That’s according to game director and producer Naoki Yoshida, who spoke to us (via a translator) at Gamescom about the 2010 release of the MMORPG, which had a generally negative reception at launch, and was then superseded by the current version, launched in 2013. Yoshida said “in 2010, this title was a massive failure, and everyone thought that this was the end of Final Fantasy, and they were really worried about that.”

“The game started with a really, really devastating status, but that’s why the team wanted to stand up on their own feet, by honestly talking to media and players about where they were at the moment, and make promises, and trying to keep those promises and show our integrity.”

On the topic of maintaining momentum as an MMO, Yoshida also added that “so many MMO games are struggling to survive in the market. That said, FF14 is growing from strength to strength, which is really rare. This is because of all of the effort that the development team has put into the game, and the community support, so there’s no intention to stop.”

And it looks like it is full steam ahead for Final Fantasy XIV now that it’s going “from strength to strength” – Yoshida announced just after Shadowbringers’ release in July that another major Final Fantasy XIV update was in the works.