Final Fantasy XI is celebrating an incredible 16 years of service so producer Akihiko Matsui and current director Yoji Fujito had an interview with Famitsu.



They had a few interesting things to discuss including the future of the game, you can read highlights from it below thanks to Siliconera.



Now that they’re only managing the PC version, the team size has shrunk. The remaining staff felt that the world of Vana’diel would die if they didn’t continue working on it.



As for future content updates, the Final Fantasy XI team wants to wisely use what they have and work on content that hasn’t been played recently or places that haven’t been visited in a while, and make them more lively.



Since the development cost for MMORPGs is higher than what most people expect, they wanted to make it clear that they will not turn to crowdfunding.



There are many voices of those who want an offline version of Final Fantasy XI; however, moving Final Fantasy XI to modern hardware would require building and repairing technologies from scratch, and doing so for the sheer volume of the game would be costly.



As for an HD remaster version, it’s an issue about development environment. Since Final Fantasy XI’s content is still being developed using materials for PS2, making the data to construct Vana’diel for current generation consoles would require making development tools from scratch. It’s also a very unique format so they can’t make a simple port by importing the data to the development tools, even with existing resources.



There are plans to add more to the story. The team currently has members studying cutscene tools, so they might be able to start adding new story soon.



The team’s current plan is to bolster Final Fantasy XI’s existing content.



